COVID’s rampage through the country’s nursing homes killed more than 172,000 residents and spurred the biggest industry reform in decades: a mandate that homes employ a minimum number of nurses.
Consumer advocates, industry officials and independent researchers agree that the incoming administration is likely to rescind the rule, given the first Trump administration’s “” campaign to remove “unnecessary, obsolete, or excessively burdensome health regulations on hospitals and other healthcare providers.” Among other things, Trump aided the industry by
“Staffing is everything in terms of nursing-home quality,” said R. Tamara Konetzka, a professor of public health sciences at the University of Chicago. “There is more than enough time to identify, train and hire additional staff,” the Biden administration wrote. The nursing home industry says many homes cannot afford to increase their workforces, and that, even if they could, there is a scarcity of trained nurses, and not enough people willing to work as aides for an average $19 an hour. A registered nursean hour on average in a nursing home, less than what they could make at a hospital, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About three-quarters of nursing homes are for-profit. The industry, though, highlights the most sympathetic examples: rural nonprofit nursing homes like Kimball County Manor & Assisted Living in Kimball, Nebraska. Its staffing levels for registered nurses are 40% below what the new rule would require, federal data shows.