News digest: CMS does not fulfill spring promise to release minimum staffing standardsYet another week came and went without the much-awaited unveiling [of the staffing mandate] announcement. National provider leaders said again this week they have...

CMS Official: We’re ‘Very Seriously’ Weighing Nursing Home Operators’ Staffing Concerns, Creative Solutions NeededDr. Shari Ling, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Thursday confirmed that the...

Consumer group counterpunches as nursing homes worry about staffing mandateWhile nursing home advocates continue to plead with federal officials about what they call the lack of feasibility for an expected first-ever federal staffing mandate, a...

Completely Out of Touch: Biden’s Minimum Staffing Proposal Comes as Skilled Nursing Reels From Labor CrisisAs state and federal policymakers clamor to set nursing home minimum staffing standards – most recently in the Biden administration’s...

OIG signals new focus on nursing homesThe federal Office of Inspector General recently published  its “OIG’s Top Unimplemented Recommendations: Solutions To Reduce Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in HHS Programs.” In the Top Recommendations, OIG stated...

PBJ research report and related news: This study examined the proportion of facility revenues spent on nursing staff, as well as nursing staff levels in hours worked and paid per resident day, in 2019. Nationally, the median proportion of revenues...

A major provider organization Thursday called out a newspaper’s national investigation into nursing home staffing as “unfair and mischaracterized.”

USA Today’s lengthy article focused on staffing benchmarks set by federal agencies, understaffing of facilities and the harm it causes residents and staff, and the low percentage of citations compared to the number of understaffed facilities the paper found in its investigation.

“We are extremely disappointed in USA Today’s unfair and mischaracterized reporting,” AHCA leaders said. “The analysis that USA Today bases their claims on is flawed.”

As the leaves start to fall in many parts of the US, so has something else: Hope that a rule establishing minimum staffing levels in nursing homes won’t happen in spring.

It’s become abundantly clear over the past few months that the administration will not be deterred from its mission. It will soon tell nursing facilities how many people they have to have to run their businesses. Long-term care’s biggest figureheads have acknowledged as much and have started planning for the next steps.