Spending More Revenue on Labor Not Guaranteed to Achieve ‘Adequate’ Nursing Home Staffing

Pushing nursing homes to allocate more money to increase staffing levels will not necessarily achieve the goals of the proposed minimum staffing standard unless aided by other regulatory interventions, according to a new study.

The study, published in Health Affairs, examined spending and staffing data from more than 12,000 nursing homes and looked at the proportion of revenues these nursing homes spent on nursing staff in 2019.

Facilities with higher shares of Medicaid residents spent a larger share of revenues on nursing staff but had lower staffing levels, the data revealed.

“Any specific threshold for nursing staff expenditures that regulators might consider would have a varying degree of effectiveness in ensuring that any given nursing home was adequately staffed,” researchers wrote.