Harrisburg, PA (February 13, 2023) — The Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA) sent a letter to U.S. Senator Bob Casey (PA) today expressing concern with the Biden administration's short-sighted priority to increase nursing home staffing minimums and Senator Casey’s support of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) recently-completed study with unknown results.
Pennsylvania is currently in the process of increasing staffing minimums in nursing homes –– including the implementation of 24 hour staffing ratios –– to enhance care while remaining true to current workforce challenges and Pennsylvania’s capability to meet a commitment of reimbursing providers for care. An unrealistic, unattainable and unfunded federal staffing requirement would undermine Pennsylvania’s efforts to advance and support access to care.
In the letter to Senator Casey, PHCA shared an analysis of what a national staffing increase of 4.1 hours of care per resident per day would require in Pennsylvania. The analysis determined such a mandate would require 10,000 more workers and hundreds of millions of additional dollars in Medicaid funding. PHCA also shared a recent jobs report for long-term care, revealing a national job loss for nursing homes of more than 13 percent since February 2020 –– making nursing homes the sector impacted the worst within the healthcare continuum.
Senator Casey’s letter, co-signed by six other senators, comes less than one month after 13 U.S. Senators sent a bipartisan letter to CMS, expressing concern with a federal staffing mandate for nursing homes.
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Media contact:
Eric Heisler
Director of Communications, PHCA
717-678-1031
