AGs Asking for Guidance

After the Trump administration threw away a national mandate requiring a minimum number of nurses to be on site in nursing homes, concerned attorney generals are pleading with CMS to help Americans in nursing homes. In place of the old rule, the attorney generals of 18 different states are asking the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to consider a slightly more relaxed rule: instead of original minimum 3.48 nurse staffing hours per patient day for all U.S. nursing homes, the states ask that only certain for-profit nursing homes be required to follow this mandate.

This would require that a safe staff-to-resident ratio be implemented only in nursing home that show “high-risk financial and ownership practices.” Thus, if a nursing home does not demonstrate dangerous practices or corruption in its financial sector, the standard will not be applied to them.

This potential rule gets at the heart of long-term care issues: Because greed and corruption is all too common among nursing home owners, residents often end up paying a hefty price for the lack of nurse supervision, sometimes costing them their lives.