California, Oklahoma Consider Nursing Home Staffing Measures
In California, a coalition, including the Gray Panthers, Older Women's League, California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, Congress of California Seniors and National Senior Citizens Law Center, is throwing its support behind a bill (AB 1075) that would create "strict staffing levels" at the state's nursing homes. Assembly member Kevin Shelley's (D) bill would replace the current system that mandates a certain number of hours per patient with a system limiting the number of patients each nursing assistant could care for during one shift. There is a "direct correlation" between staffing levels and quality of care, the bill's supporters say. But Betsy Hite, spokesperson for the California Association of Health Facilities, "question[ed]" whether requiring more staff is the "right answer" to the problem. She said, "We are 30,000 care givers short right now. We believe the way to correct that is to pay our workers a respectable wage. We don't think bodies will come if you just increase the staffing level." She added that the industry would have to seek additional funds from state and federal governments to hire more staff (Pope, San Jose Mercury News, 5/23).
Reneging on Minimum Staffing?
Oklahoma nursing home advocates and state lawmakers are puzzled by a "last-minute" effort by the state's "powerful" nursing home industry "to junk" minimum staffing requirements one day prior to the session's end. The requirements call for homes to have one nursing home worker for every eight patients during the day, one worker per 12 patients in the evening and one worker per 17 patients overnight. Kelly Hardin, president of the Oklahoma Nursing Home Association, said that the industry wants "more staffing flexibility" and called for homes to be able to decide how many workers they need. According to nursing home ombudsman Esther Hauser, nursing home lobbyists have been meeting this week with state Senate staffers and talking privately with some senators about the bill. State Sen. Bernest Cain (D) added that nursing homes did not "have any problem with requirements a year ago," when they agreed to the requirements "on the heels of a Health Department scandal involving nursing homes" (Hinton, Daily Oklahoman, 5/18).
