Medicare Implements Nursing Home Staffing Rules
Administration Also Sets In-Home Care Spending Ratio
Last week, Medicare adopted new rules which, if implemented over the next several years, will require nursing homes to add a lot more nurses and trained caregivers and, on paper at least, greatly improve the quality of care for about 1.5 million low-income, older and disabled citizens in nursing homes, intermediate care facilities, and their homes.
Operators of the nation’s more than 14,000 nursing homes repeated their contention that the rules will be a death sentence for many homes already struggling to find adequate staff and turn a profit.
Before providing details on these rules, I want to note a related action -- the Biden Administration’s new requirement for companies that provide in-home care to patients on Medicaid to spend at least 80 percent of their federal payments on caregiver compensation, with the rest going to the cost of operating their business and their profits. This is akin to the medical loss ratios that health insurers are required to meet.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Aging in America to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.