White House Order Aims to Tie Nursing Home Medicare Payments to Worker Retention

The White House today announced that President Biden will enact “the most sweeping set of executive actions to improve care in history,” which will include directives related to nursing home staffing and Medicare payments.

Specifically, Biden’s executive order will direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “build on the minimum staffing standards for nursing homes and condition a portion of Medicare payments on how well a nursing home retains workers,” according to a White House fact sheet.

This set of actions from the White House comes a little more than a year after Biden put forward a sweeping set of proposed nursing home reforms, including a federal minimum staffing standard. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is still in the process of formulating a proposed staffing mandate, to be released later this year.