For skilled nursing facilities, this research signals that PBJ data is being analyzed not only for average staffing levels but for the frequency of below-average staffing days – patterns that researchers link to Five-Star quality measures, deficiency citations, and adverse resident outcomes.
Association of Staffing Instability With Quality of Nursing Home Care
In this quality improvement study of 14 717 nursing homes, after controlling for average staffing levels, staffing instability of licensed practical nurses and certified nurse aides was associated with lower quality across standard quality measures. This study suggests that day-to-day staffing instability is an important marker of nursing home quality, limiting measurement, reporting, or policy to average hours per resident-day likely will miss important opportunities to improve care.
Mukamel, Dana B., et al. “Association of Staffing Instability With Quality of Nursing Home Care.” JAMA Network Open, vol. 6, no. 1, 10 Jan. 2023, e2250389. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.50389.
Staffing ‘instability’ might be new mandate metric; providers gear up for battle
Nursing homes that keep day-to-day nursing staff stable, especially by avoiding days with low LPN or CNA presence, perform better on a variety of patient outcomes, researchers from the University of California and the University of Chicago reported in JAMA Network Open Tuesday. The authors pose their calculations as a method to measure staff adequacy for patient needs, possibly “above and beyond” the traditional hours per resident day metric.
— McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, January 11, 2023
