Federal bill returning temporary nurse aide waiver gets new life

A bill that would allow non-certified nurse aides to work in nursing homes longer than four months has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives.

Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Madeleine Dean (D-PA) are backing the Building America’s Health Care Workforce Act, which would waive a requirement for temporary nurse aides to complete 75 hours of state-approved training and a competency evaluation in four months. Earlier in the pandemic, a similar waiver provided nursing homes with a new staffing supply after thousands of trained caregivers fled their jobs.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services allowed the waiver to sunset last summer, forcing TNAs in most states to get certified by October or leave their positions. The agency granted additional waiver extensions to at least 15 states and dozens of individual providers, but in most cases those were tied to the public health emergency.

The new nurse aide waiver legislation would restore the allowance nationally for two years beyond the public health emergency, which is currently slated to end in April.