- About 75% of New York nursing homes must hire more workers or reduce their residents to meet new staffing minimum law, industry officials said.
- But national labor shortages have forced New York nursing homes to leave about 6,700 beds empty currently, suggesting further cuts could endanger the system, industry officials added.
New York will soon begin enforcing its 2021 state law establishing staffing minimums at nursing homes, despite concerns the effort could turn the upstate hospital capacity crunch into a crisis.
Nursing homes will face fines of up to $2,000 per day for failing to meet the new staffing levels and related financial standards. About 75% of the state’s roughly 600 nursing homes have been violating the standards as of earlier this year, industry officials said.
In other words, hundreds of nursing homes either must hire more staff or reduce their number of residents to avoid fines in coming months. State health officials also can waive fines in specific communities based on a formula for declaring a local labor shortage.
Enforcement of the staffing minimums had been previously delayed for nearly a year amid executive orders and legal challenges involving the law.
Meanwhile, many nursing home operators asserted they are struggling to attract and afford new workers. Some have already begun rejecting new residents, leaving hospitals across upstate facing bed shortages due to scores of well patients awaiting placement at nursing homes.
What health leaders say about NY nursing home staffing
Health care leaders addressed the saga in stark terms during a recent state Public Health and Health Planning Council meeting.
They warned some ambulances are already waiting hours in parking lots to deliver patients to overburdened hospitals. Some patients are also being turned away from hospitals and transferred hundreds of miles away.
These dire conditions at hospitals could worsen without legislative changes to the staffing minimum law, they said, adding many nursing homes could face drastic service cuts or even closure.
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“We’re facing the possibility of real system collapse,” said Dr. John Rugge, council member and founder of Hudson Headwaters Health Network.
As things stand now, James Clyne, Jr., president and CEO of nursing home trade group LeadingAge, told the council about 6,700 nursing home beds statewide are currently empty due to staffing shortages impacting health providers nationally.
Several nursing home operators also noted they’re offering sign-on bonuses, tuition assistance and other incentives to attract new workers, but the efforts have struggled due to labor shortages.
What a NY nursing home worker says about staffing
Still, the council voted Nov. 17 to approve the final regulations for enforcing the law. Council members noted failing to act would have left the law in place without waivers for labor shortages, while removing state health officials’ authority to reform regulations.
Annesa Brown, a certified nurse’s aide at Yorktown Nursing Home and 1199SEIU union member, spoke in support of the law. She disputed that many nursing homes can’t afford to hire more workers, adding understaffed facilities harm residents’ care.
“I feel terribly that I cannot do my job,” she said. “I have not been able to give my residents the care they deserve.”
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What does the NY nursing home staffing law require?
The state law, which was approved by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, requires every facility to maintain daily staffing hours equal to 3.5 hours of care per resident per day by a certified nurse aide, licensed practical nurse or registered nurse.
The law also requires nursing homes to spend at least 70% of revenue on direct resident care, and at least 40% of revenue on resident-facing staffing.
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Enforcement of the measure will be closely watched in 2023 after USA TODAY Network revealed the history of nursing home complaint backlogs in New York, as well as regulators’ failures to penalize nursing homes for flouting federal staffing rules.
For example, government penalties for insufficient staffing are rare in the state of New York. Of the facilities reporting levels below those expected by the Medicare formula, only 3% were cited for it, USA TODAY reported recently.
