Understaffing in Nursing Homes

Beth Janicek

Attorney
(866) 735-1102 Ext 395

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The Long Term Care Community has issued a very informative health care policy brief which is full of well reasoned arguments for passing legislation to require nursing homes to mandate minimum staffing levels. Texas does not have legislation which mandates the minimum staffing levels and legislation is needed to protect these vunerable people. Increased staffing levels will increase the quality of care for our nursing home patients.

A report cited in the 2006 Institute of Medicine report found that more than half of the 350,000 adverse drug events (ADEs) and 80% the 20,000 fatal or life threatening ADEs that occur in nursing homes are preventable. 27 This is approximately 191,000 preventable ADEs or fatalities that occur each year.

This brief is supported by numerous studies showing that the quality of care increases with an increase in staffing. One of the other benefits of mandatory staffing levels is improving the working conditions for the nursing staff by decreasing their workloads. The improvement in health of the patients and the improvement in working conditions for the staff will offset the cost of requiring more staff.