The Biden administration finalized on Monday the first-ever minimum staffing rule at nursing homes, Vice President Kamala Harris announced.

The controversial mandate requires that all nursing homes that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding provide a total of at least 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident per day, including defined periods from registered nurses and from nurse aides. That means a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three registered nurses and at least 10 or 11 nurse aides, as well as two additional nurse staff, who could be registered nurses, licensed professional nurses or nurse aides, per shift, according to a White House fact sheet.

Plus, nursing homes must have a registered nurse onsite at all times. The mandate will be phased in, with rural communities having longer timeframes, and temporary exemptions will be available for facilities in areas with workforce shortages that demonstrate a good faith effort to hire.

The rule, which was first proposed in September and initially called for at least three hours of daily nursing care per resident, is aimed at addressing nursing homes that are chronically understaffed, which can lead to sub-standard or unsafe care, the White House said.

  • henfredemars
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    7 months ago

    Shortage? No such thing as a labor shortage. Humans are not scarce.

    Pay more, and workers will follow. If they do not follow, then it’s not worth it to them. Make it worthwhile.

    Affordability? I guarantee if you pay enough they’ll be able to afford the profession!

    • ringwraithfish@startrek.website
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      7 months ago

      Pay enough and staff correctly and the people will come. My wife is an RN. I know directly from her that most places don’t do any of those things and still complain about shortages.

      Who knew profit driven medical care was a bad idea /s

    • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      We need more of these jobs to have similar paths like blue collar ones. Where you can learn being an apprentice to someone else and take classes on the clock and paid for by the employer. Makes it more accessible for more people and the employer knows how they’re getting trained, and that they’re gonna be ready to work once they’re done.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        That’s pretty much how the rest of the federal government works.

        At some point you really need a bachelor’s, and again a masters. But you can start entry level and move up.

        If we nationalized our healthcare system (like every other 1st world country) you’d likely get your wish. Along with a lot of other things the majority of voters want.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Shortage? No such thing as a labor shortage. Humans are not scarce

      They’re not.

      But nurses are, have been for years.

      It’s not a matter of pay, you can’t just snap your fingers and get a nursing degree…

      Affordability? I guarantee if you pay enough they’ll be able to afford the profession!

      Just go into tens of thousands of debt, and four years from now after a shit ton of nursing homes close well have plenty of nurses!

      Brilliant plan.

      • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        What does nursing school cost there? What type of nursing degree is needed to fill the roles that are short? Most nurses here don’t need a multi-year course. The entry level nurse position is a 6 month course. Do elderly care facilities need a higher degree than the entry level? Or does that not exist there? The higher nursing degree is a proper medical degree and of course takes years, but I don’t think that’s the kind of nurses needed for this is it?

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          What does nursing school cost there?

          America?

          This works better if you don’t ask 10 questions in a single paragraph bud.

          Ideally you’d just Google them tho, would be waaaaay faster.

          • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I don’t think they’re asking questions because they don’t know / can’t find the answer, they’re asking questions to you specifically to try and coax you into thinking critically. It seems that they have failed, but that says more about you than them.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              And if they tell me where they’ll asking about, I’ll answer the first one.

              But there’s hardly any context, I’d have to ask for clarification for every single question they’re “just asking”.

              It’s a time sink, but I’d probably answer a couple if they kept it civil.

              And if you think that was the Socratic method…

              You might want to read up on it again.

              • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                They were completely civil, you’re the one slinging thinly veiled insults. Speaking of which, you should work on your grammar before needlessly insulting my intelligence. Your first sentence is a train wreck.

                  • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Or you could take a step back, realize that there were at least three people in that thread pointing out where you made flawed arguments and consider the old saying about meeting one argumentative d-bag vs. everyone you meet being argumentative d-bags.

      • fitgse@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        A huge amount of nurses have left the field in the last decade. This has been due to poor wages, poor working conditions, and more pressure on nurses. They all burned out.

        During Covid, even when we were all clapping for nurses, instead of giving pay raises they’d rather hire contractors and travel nurses to fill positions because pay raises are permanent. A whole bunch of nurses I know left to do temporary travel, sometimes at the hospital they already worked at. This created huge amounts of resentment and nurses left in droves.

        The consolidation of our hospitals and health facilities into the hands of a few small companies is leading to a huge collapse of our healthcare, and it is all their own making.

        This all started 30 years ago when hospitals stopped being run by a chief medical officer and a chief nursing officer, and instead began being run by MBAs who only looked at numbers and short term profits. Drs and Nurses have no autonomy anymore and are treated like workers on an assembly line.

        Get rid of the MBAs. Break up HCA, Tenant, and the other big chains, require all health facilities to be non profits, and maybe we’ll see people who actually want to work in the medical profession again.