How many care givers does your nursing home really have?

(The following article is from the e-newsletter of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. (www.canhr.org) It contains links at the bottom of the article to information from all 50 states and the District of Columbia made more easily accessible by the Long Term Care Community Coalition.)

Interested in knowing about registered nurse (RN) or weekend staffing levels at a nursing home or how often it falls below California minimum staffing requirements? Data released . . . by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) can help answer these important questions and more. The data is the first installment of nursing home staffing information CMS is collecting pursuant to the Affordable Care Act that is intended to give the public a more complete and accurate picture of actual staffing levels in Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes.

Unlike other staffing data reported by nursing homes, the new data is intended to be verifiable through linkages to facility payroll systems that can be audited. CMS plans to integrate the new data into Nursing Home Compare and its nursing home rating system, but for now has released it in a separate data set that reports daily staffing levels at most, but not all, nursing homes.

To make this information more accessible for consumers, the Long Term Care Community Coalition (LTCCC) downloaded the data for the most recent quarter – the 2nd quarter of 2017 – and computed the hours of care per resident day for all care staff and for RNs. The data compiled by LTCCC and its press release –Does Your Nursing Home Have Enough Care Staff? – are available on its website.