Study: More staff, less falls

Another study confirms what nursing homes have likely known all along: facilities with higher CNA staff levels experience fewer fall injuries.

While it may sound like common sense, (i.e., more nurses available to help residents walk results in fewer residents falling when they don’t have someone to help them…) nursing homes continue to turn a blind eye to the facts.

McKnights reported on a study published this March looked at 11,183 different nursing homes with a total of 1,115,304 long-stay residents enrolled in Medicare fee-for-service. After calculating the staff hours per residents per day and the number of falls for each facility, researchers concluded that less falls are associated with higher staffing.

Unfortunately, researchers also found that the threshold of staff needed to reduce fall rates to an appropriate level is rarely met. According to the study, over 70% of nursing homes did not meet the recommended CNA staffing rates.

While it doesn’t take a genius to comprehend these studies, the reasons why nursing homes continue to maintain such low staffing rates is mind-boggling; the only sensible explanation is the greed of facility owners attempting to cut costs by employing as little staff as possible. To make matters clearer, this study also found that the low-staffed nursing homes were more likely to have for-profit ownership.

The pattern is hapless but clear: nursing home owners allow vulnerable residents to go without care, fall, develop injuries, and live shorter lifespans in an effort to accumulate wealth.