Minnesota Plans To Train, Deploy 1,000 Long-Term Care CNAs Within 2 Months

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced a new initiative Monday with the goal of recruiting, training and deploying at least 1,000 new CNAs by the end of January who will work in long-term care facilities experiencing staffing shortages. 

After calling on the National Guard to help nursing homes facing severe staffing shortages last month, the governor hopes that this training program can help Minnesota maintain a stable long-term care workforce for years to come.

“Our long-term care facilities are relying on a new generation of certified nursing assistants to provide quality care to their patients. By working with communities, colleges, and care providers around Minnesota, we will recruit and train these new CNAs and ensure we have the staff we need in long-term care,” Walz said in a statement Monday. “Our goal is to train 1,000 CNAs in two months to bolster staffing and provide necessary care to Minnesota patients during our COVID-19 response.”

Data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development shows nursing assistants are the sixth highest in-demand job in the state.

Over 11,500 students enrolled in certified nursing assistant programs in Minnesota between 2017 and 2020; however, by the fall 2020, only 1,500 were still enrolled in the program.

The lack of new recruits joining the field and inability of nursing homes to keep the staff they have continues to be the story for nursing homes across the state. They saw 1.5 times more resignations than hires in the month of August, a survey from the Long-Term Care Imperative, a legislative collaborative between Care Providers of Minnesota and LeadingAge Minnesota, showed.

As of October, there were 23,000 unfilled senior caregiver positions across the state.

CNAs are by far the most needed position for long-term care facilities in the state, Kari Thurlow, vice president of advocacy for LeadingAge Minnesota told Skilled Nursing News.

“By opening up and creating no barrier training, we are hopeful that individuals that are still on the sidelines of the workforce or that might want to make a career change really take a close look at this opportunity to help meet the needs of our aging population,” she said.

Monarch Healthcare Management Chief Operating Officer Marc Halpert said his facilities will take all the CNAs they can get right now.

“Out of our 40 facilities, I would venture to say 500 CNA openings is probably an understatement,” he told SNN. “Some are really struggling, especially in rural Minnesota. Over half of our facilities have caps right now on admissions so we need all the staff that we can get.”

Halpert said members of the National Guard started to arrive this week to help out at short-staffed facilities.

“A thousand CNAs is a great start, but I think the state shortage is probably close to 10,000 to 20,000 CNAs,” he added. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

Lori Porter, co-founder and CEO of the National Association of Health Care Assistants (NAHCA), said finding CNAs is just the start for nursing homes, but retaining them will be the key.

While Porter praised the governor’s initiative in addressing the staffing shortage head-on, she wanted to be sure there was a plan to keep the new CNA recruits the state gets long-term.

“Recruiting 1,000 CNAs wil help … I just know that if they go into a broken health care system where there is no support for the frontline CNAs … they will move to something that pays more,” she said. “I have a CNA that’s leaving after being on a job for 14 years and she’s the only CNA on night shift for 48 residents. She just can’t do it anymore.”

While Porter felt the governor’s plan could “make a difference,” with hundreds of skilled nursing facilities in the state and every care center needing about “10 to 15 CNAs” to fill out their roster, more work will still need to be done. She was also concerned that problems like staff burnout and a lack of support will continue to persist.

And the staffing crunch is not limited to Minnesota, as nursing homes and other health care providers — along with employers of all types — struggle to hire and retain workers in light of pandemic-related labor market disruption.

“It’s very common now to be the only CNA in a building,” she said. “I recently got a report out of Iowa from one of my members who said the entire staff was made up of agency and that there were no CNAs working at that time.”

Partnership with state schools

Through a partnership among the state, colleges and long-term care providers, led by the Minnesota Office Education, new recruits will be enrolled in certification courses at Minnesota state colleges as part of the program.

The governor plans to use the National Guard training as a model, as approximately 400 members of the National Guard are currently training at sixteen colleges within the state system.

The administration will use $3.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding to pay for all the expenses associated with the CNA program, which still needs to be signed off on by the Legislative COVID-19 Response Commission.

“This will remove what we know to be a barrier for people,” Thurlow said. “Individuals who are seeking CNA training and certification have to cover the training upfront before going through certification. They will likely get reimbursed by their employer afterwards, but they have to cover those costs upfront.”

The training will be at no cost to the new recruits.

“We have an online CNA training program that has been approved by the state that has been very successful and I think combined with this new no barrier, no cost plan that the governor has, may make CNA training and certification a viable option for more people than ever before,” Thurlow added.