Hours after Pennsylvania health officials announced proposed changes that would increase the time staff are required to spend with nursing home residents each day, the state’s Health Care Association called the mandates “out-of-touch” and “unattainable.”
“In our current operating environment, this proposed regulation is an unattainable, unfunded mandate that will cripple an essential component of the long-term care continuum in one of the oldest states, in terms of population, in the entire country,” Zach Shamberg, president and CEO of the association, said in a press release.
The proposed regulations, impacting the state’s 692 SNFs, would increase the minimum daily standard from 2.7 hours to 4.1 hours of direct care, an increase of 1.4 hours per day, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.
Gov. Tom Wolf and Alison Beam, acting secretary of the department of health, along with other officials, made the announcement Wednesday.
Beam said she expected the proposed direct care changes and others to possibly go into effect after 2022, following legislative review, according to reporting by the Post-Gazette.
To meet the staffing standard statewide, Shamberg said nursing homes would need to hire an additional 7,000 direct care workers, at a time where facilities across the country are facing staffing shortages.
According to a survey conducted by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL), 94% of the 616 nursing homes surveyed said they are experiencing a staffing shortage.
“Once again, the experiences of long-term care providers were disregarded. Rather than include input from the front lines of the pandemic, Department of Health officials chose to draft regulations with unachievable mandates that will do nothing to improve the quality of care in Pennsylvania,” Shamberg said in the release.
Shamberg added that the mandate would cost operators $6 million per week in new wages, with no funding currently attached to the state’s proposed plans.
“Today’s announcement, unfortunately, is a step in the wrong direction,” he said in the release.
The proposed regulations have been submitted to the General Assembly, Independent Regulatory Review Commission and Legislative Reference Bureau, according to the Post-Gazette.
Companies featured in this article:
American Health Care Association, National Center for Assisted Living, Pennsylvania Health Care Association
