KFF (formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation) recently analyzed the percentage and characteristics of long-term care facilities (nursing homes) that would meet higher levels of nursing staff, if required under Medicare and Medicaid, and found “virtually all nursing facilities meet current staffing requirements (0.3 HPRD) and most would meet requirements of up to 3.0 HPRD, but if the new staffing requirements are 4.0 or greater, most facilities would need to hire new staff to comply.”
The KFF analyzed data from 14,575 nursing facilities (97% of all facilities, serving 1.17 million or 98% of all residents) that reported staffing levels (in hours per resident day (HPRD)) from June 2023, and reported the following findings:
- Nearly all facilities would meet a requirement of 2.5 or fewer HPRD and 85% of facilities would meet a requirement of 3.0 HPRD, but close to half (45%) of all nursing facilities would not meet a 3.5 HPRD requirements, and only 29% would meet an HPRD of 4.0.
- Similarly, when looked at as a share of residents, 83% of residents live in a facility with staffing levels of at least 3.0 HPRD, but 50% of residents live in a facility that meet a 3.5 HRPD and only 23% live in a facility with staffing levels of 4.0 or greater.
- At any required staffing level above 2.5 HPRD, a lower percentage of for-profit nursing facilities would meet the requirement than non-profit or government nursing facilities.
- There is wide state variation in the share of facilities that would meet required HPRD levels of 3.0 or higher: At a level of 4 HPRD, the share of facilities meeting the requirement would range from 12% in Texas to 100% in Alaska.
Under current requirements, facilities do not have to adjust staffing based on the types of residents that live in the facility.
Nursing Home Staffing Levels By Ownership Type
If the HPRD staffing level was 3.0, KFF found that 81% of for-profit nursing facilities would meet the requirement, 94% of non-profit facilities would meet the requirement, and 90% of government facilities would meet the requirement. If the HPRD staffing level was raised by one half-hour to 3.5, 47% of all for-profit nursing facilities would meet the requirement, 75% of non-profit facilities would meet the requirement, and 68% of government facilities would meet the requirement. If the HPRD staffing level was raised by one hour to 4.0, 20% (one in five) of for-profit nursing facilities would meet the requirement, 52% of non-profit facilities would meet the requirement, and 47% of government facilities would meet the requirement.
Approximately 72% of all facilities are for-profit (home to 74% of residents), 22% are non-profit (home to 20% of residents), and 6% are government-owned, (home to 6% of residents).
Only 15% of facilities have staffing levels over 4.5 HPRD and only 8% have levels of 5.0. Only one in ten residents live in a facility with 4.5 or more HPRD and only 5% live in a facility with 5 or more HPRD.
Almost 1,2 million Americans received nursing home care from 15,076 Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities in 2022.
Visit our website or call us toll-free in the United States at 800-295-3959 to find medical malpractice attorneys in your state who may assist you.
Turn to us when you don’t know where to turn.