Warning on staffing minimum: Studying costs won’t matter if pay doesn’t add up

Cost analysis will be “an important part” of a final report on federal minimum staffing standards, the head of a national study assured nursing home stakeholders Monday.

“I think these cost analyses are really important,“ said Alan White, PhD, principal at Abt Associates, the firm contracted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to research the agency’s possible staffing mandate.

“We’ll know from the other analyses … what the benefits of increased staffing are in terms of better quality and better resident outcomes, that sort of thing. Bringing in the cost analysis kind of allows us to understand how those benefits are balanced against the costs that nursing homes would incur to increase staffing to whatever level CMS might specify.”