Nursing Home Workers, Mental Health Professionals In Short Supply

Modern Healthcare: Nursing Home Employment Continues Free Fall, Industry Prepares For Worker Exodus
Even as overall healthcare employment has rebounded slightly, job numbers in nursing homes continue their downward spiral. After more than a decade of gradual losses, nursing home employment began a free fall in April as the novel coronavirus spread across the country. And it hasn't recovered. Nursing homes need more workers to handle the challenges of COVID-19, yet jobs remain vacant. Low wages, limited healthcare benefits and hard work make these jobs hard to fill, experts say. The added threat of contracting COVID-19 makes it even more difficult. (Christ, 1/19)

KHN: California Is Overriding Its Limits On Nurse Workloads As Covid Surges
California’s telemetry nurses, who specialize in the electronic monitoring of critically ill patients, normally take care of four patients at once. But ever since the state relaxed California’s mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios in mid-December, Nerissa Black has had to keep track of six. And these six patients are really sick: Many of them are being treated simultaneously for a stroke and covid-19, or a heart attack and covid. With more patients than usual needing more complex care, Black said she’s worried she’ll miss something or make a mistake. (Dembosky, 1/20)

ABC News: Mental Health Care Workers Stretched Thin To Address Urgent Need In Pandemic 
Liv Jones, a licensed professional counselor and art therapist, says her agency in Ohio has nearly doubled its staff over the last year to address the need for mental health care during the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, even now, there’s still a waitlist for clients who wish to start therapy, she says. (Yang, 1/19)

In other health care industry news —

CIDRAP: Crowded ICUs Tied To Higher Risk Of COVID-19 Death
COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) at US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals during peak coronavirus patient surges were twice as likely to die than those treated during low-demand periods, an observational study published today in JAMA Network Open suggests. (Van Beusekom, 1/19)

Modern Healthcare: Providers Await New HHS Coronavirus Grant Reporting Deadline
HHS has yet to declare a revised deadline for healthcare providers to report their Provider Relief Fund grants after scrapping the original one late last week. The agency had originally planned to open its reporting portal on Jan. 15, 2021, with the first submissions required by Feb. 15. That all changed with Congress' passage of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act in late December, which poured another $3 billion into the PRF pot and tweaked reporting requirements. HHS said it's reworking its rules so they're consistent with the law. Providers are generally happy about the change, said Aparna Venkateswaran, a senior manager with Moss Adams. (Bannow, 1/19)

KHN: Patients Fend For Themselves To Access Highly Touted Covid Antibody Treatments 
By the time he tested positive for covid-19 on Jan. 12, Gary Herritz was feeling pretty sick. He suspects he was infected a week earlier, during a medical appointment in which he saw health workers who were wearing masks beneath their noses or who had removed them entirely. His scratchy throat had turned to a dry cough, headache, joint pain and fever — all warning signs to Herritz, who underwent liver transplant surgery in 2012, followed by a rejection scare in 2018. He knew his compromised immune system left him especially vulnerable to a potentially deadly case of covid. (Aleccia, 1/20)

KHN: Advocates View Health Care As Key To Driving LGBTQ Rights Conversation
When Allison Scott came out as a trans woman in 2013, she told not only family and friends, but also her primary care physician. She didn’t need his help with hormone therapy. She had another doctor for that. But she wanted to share the information with her doctor of more than 10 years in case it affected other aspects of her health. (Pattani, 1/20)