by James C. Sherlock
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released its national nursing home quality data for July.
It provides summaries of nursing home performance for each state, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories.
I sorted it for Reported Total Nurse Staffing Per Resident Per Day. I did that because Virginia’s lead nursing home lobbyist in January insisted, on video, to a hearing of an always-compliant General Assembly that the Commonwealth’s nursing homes be judged by that metric.
In July, our nursing homes ranked 49th by their own preferred total nurse staffing measure. Nurse shortages are nationwide, so that fact cannot explain it.
Those same nursing homes in those same data ranked 45th in total nurse turnover at 57.5% annually. Some of the worst individual Virginia nursing homes experience nearly 100% nursing turnover annually.
That creates a vicious cycle.
- Virginia has too many nursing homes that are understaffed, some by design;
- Nurses quite naturally don’t like to work in them and, with many job options, will not remain in such places;
- When staffing falls, nurses know it from CMS data or reputation and won’t take a job where they will be overworked and unable to provide optimum care to patients;
- The understaffed nursing homes get worse.