Skilled nursing and seniors housing executives have blamed wage pressures in part for their struggles in recent years, but a new analysis finds that nursing assistants haven’t seen their wages increase in a decade. The median nursing assistant brought in $12.78 per hour in 2007, compared to an inflation-adjusted $12.84 a full 10 years later, […]
When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began basing its rating of nursing home staffing levels on payroll records in April of this year, many skilled nursing facilities were found to be underreporting their nursing and caretaking personnel levels. Soon after the New York Times published an analysis of the records by Kaiser Health […]
Staffing shortages in skilled nursing facilities made national headlines last month, but the dearth of workers and registered nurses have been a headache for nursing homes for years now. Some of the fixes can range from bonuses for hard-to-staff shifts to higher-level partnerships with local businesses and governments. But one thing is clear: The problem […]
Less than a month after a New York Times story revealed concerns about insufficient nursing home staffing levels, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) handed out nearly 1,400 one-star reviews. Last week, when CMS updated its Five-Star Quality Rating System for nursing homes, 1,387 facilities received one-star ratings for staffing coverage, according to […]
A shortage of qualified workers continues to plague the skilled nursing sector, and recent data from job board Monster backs it up. According to a new report from the Weston, Mass.-based online classifieds company, job openings for registered nurses were the most popular type of position posted during the first half of 2018. The health care […]
When Fortune magazine publishes its first “Best Workplaces in Aging Services” list on Sept. 27, it might include some skilled nursing facilities. That wasn’t what Jacquelyn Kung, CEO of Activated Insights, expected when her firm began leading the effort to compile the “Best Workplaces in Aging Services.” Activated Insights is based on the San Francisco corporate […]
Most U.S. nursing homes experience staffing fluctuations and have been overreporting their nursing and caretaking staff levels for years, according to data analyzed by Kaiser Health News for the New York Times. The new federal data comes from daily payroll records that Medicare began gathering and publishing from more than 14,000 nursing homes, as part […]
As skilled nursing occupancy continues to notch record low after record low, strategies to capitalize on the shrinking pool of residents remain top concerns for operators and investors. And at least one analyst says providers should look to the kind of operational improvements that have helped keep afloat another struggling industry: manufacturing. “It’s your labor […]
At a recent industry conference, I watched a pair of presenters show some fairly eye-opening statistics about workforce retention. The studies they cited weren’t health care-specific, but they did demonstrate that conventional wisdom about hiring — specifically, that years of experience and education correlate with strong job performance and retention — is wrong. In fact, they […]
A distressed skilled nursing facility could have problems on multiple fronts, but when trying to fix it, operators and owners need to concentrate on the people working there. Any SNF business can be broken down into four major components: physical, operational, clinical, and financial. That’s according to Isaac Dole, founder and managing partner at Chicago-based Birchwood Healthcare […]
Hiring and retaining talented skilled nursing employees remains one of the biggest challenges for operators in the industry, especially for key frontline nursing positions. Amid these pressures, hiring managers might be tempted to rely on their instincts when selecting from potential candidates — but two health care staffing experts say in many cases, conventional hiring […]
Operators of nursing homes in Texas reported 97% turnover for certified nursing assistants, with 90% turnover for other key frontline caregiver positions — promoting leaders in the state to declare a “crisis.” The Texas Health Care Association called for higher Medicaid reimbursement rates to help mitigate the trend in a recent report on its members’ financial […]
Women account for the vast majority of health care workers in the senior living space — though the proportion of young male workers is on the rise, a new analysis from senior living industry group Argentum found. Female employees accounted for 89% of health care workers, with 40% of all workers between the ages of 30 and 49. […]
As skilled nursing and other long-term care providers continue to grapple with a persistent workforce shortage, one solution could lie in strategic recruitment outside of an operator’s normal footprint. While macro-level trends show a substantial nurse and health care support worker shortage that will only get worse as the population ages, not all markets are […]
Long-term care operators around the country have dealt with a lack of qualified workers for some time now, and leaders in one Midwestern state say it’s escalated to a full-blown crisis. Nearly 20% of caregiver positions in Wisconsin are currently unfilled, as compared to about 14.5% just two years ago, according to a report released […]
Implementing a flexible model of staffing could help skilled nursing providers deal with the lows — and potential highs — in occupancy that are expected over the next several years. But to do that, they’ll have to overcome competition from outside sectors, the need to deal with higher-acuity patients, and the complexity inherent in flexible […]
Skilled nursing executives and managers worried about a persistent workforce shortage now have another number to keep them up at night: 44%. That’s the gulf between open positions and available health care practitioners, the most severe supply-demand mismatch identified in a new study prepared for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. The health care workforce […]
Wingate | CC BY-SA 2.0 Jill Bosa has been named chief operating officer (COO) at Wingate Healthcare, a senior living and health care services provider in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Bosa previously served as COO of the Nursing Center Division at Kindred Healthcare (NYSE: KND), where she oversaw more than 100 skilled nursing facilities, assisted living […]
Almost 100% of long-term care (LTC) providers in Indiana are asking staff to pick up additional hours, and more than 70% are asking employees to work double shifts or overtime, according to the preliminary findings from a survey from the Indiana Health Care Association/Indiana Center for Assisted Living (IHCA/INCAL) and other industry groups. They’re also […]
A shortage of well-qualified nurses and other frontline staff remains one of the major headaches for nursing home operators and investors around the country. Earlier this month, one state came up with a solution that’s getting bipartisan support: allowing community colleges to offer bachelor’s of science in nursing degrees (BSN). “There’s such a severe shortage […]