CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Pa. nursing home staff shortage hurting admissions, causing longer hospital stays

Daily Item - 1/22/2022

Jan. 22—Pennsylvania nursing homes are having to turn people away due, in large part, to a staffing shortage and it's having a widespread impact, health experts say.

A survey last fall of 64 of the 450 nursing home facilities represented by the Pennsylvania Health Care Association found that there's been nearly a 20 percent loss in staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I had calls with three nursing home administrators and they're telling me they've cooked for residents, worked the floor and picked up laundry shifts. The crisis is that bad," said Zach Shamberg, the association's president and CEO.

To help cover the shortage, he said, some facilities are hiring contract agency staff at a greater and unsustainable expense.

Most alarming, said Shamberg, is that a majority of nursing facilities are restricting new admissions and 48 percent of the survey respondents said they have a waiting list.

"They're turning away the vulnerable who need care" and that is causing longer stays in hospitals, he said.

Snyder-Union Area Agency on Aging Administrator Holly Kyle, who also serves as president of the statewide Area Agency on Aging Association, said the shortage of nursing home and home-based health care workers is at a critical stage and contributing to hospitals being at capacity.

"The direct care work issue is a crisis in Pennsylvania. We can't take care of people," she said.

Since Jan. 11, the National Guard Reserve has been providing additional coverage in Scranton and York counties due to the worker shortage

Right now in Union and Snyder counties alone, Kyle's staff has been unable to provide home-based services to 14 seniors.

"People end up in the ER because they can't safely stay home," she said.

Shira Vergauwen, the director of Care Coordination at Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg, said staffing shortages and the strict COVID-related isolation requirements at long-term care facilities have prevented the hospital from being able to discharge a greater number of patients.

"We see it daily," said Vergauwen. Pre-pandemic, the hospital regularly discharged patients to nursing homes to continue their care or recuperation. "Since COVID, nursing homes are asked to adhere to a lot more guidelines.

"It's had a huge ripple effect. Everybody is struggling. There are just not enough hands to take care of people."

While Mark Monahan, executive director at Nursing and Rehabilitation at the Mansion in Sunbury for the past 20 years, said he's been fortunate to have longterm management staff remain on the job during the global health crisis, "The reality is that everybody has lost a lot of staff."

Adding to the worker shortage challenge, Monohan said, the nursing home industry is having to take extra precautions to keep residents safe and that means not being able to fill all the available beds.

"We get a lot of referrals, but we need to have beds" available in case they are needed by current residents.

To address the health care worker shortage and help residents access the care they need, the Pennsylvania Health Care Association last week presented a proposal — the Care Capacity Crisis Plan — to state elected leaders. Among the recommendations is to generate targeted staffing resources from groups like FEMA and the National Guard; provide incentive pay to help providers recruit and maintain staff and develop plans to distribute COVID-19 tools, such as testing support and vaccination awareness.

Shamberg said Pennsylvania should also be looking to other states that are getting creative to address the crisis, like Minnesota where state colleges and long-term care providers are working together to recruit and train 1,000 certified nursing assistants.

Financial incentives and loan forgiveness programs for nursing students could help attract more to the profession, said Kyle.

"We have to do something," she said.

___

(c)2022 The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.)

Visit The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.) at www.dailyitem.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Nationwide News