TRENDS
Stretched to the Limit In long-term-care facilities, who has time to see suppliers when there’s so much work to do? By Mark Thill
It’s no wonder that many people call the current staffing situation in long-term care a crisis. Nursing homes lost
220,000 jobs – 40% – from March 2020 to October 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compare that to hospitals, which experienced a 1.6% loss during the same period, and home health, which experienced a 1.2% loss.
“I’ve been in this industry for nearly a decade and this is by far the biggest issue facing long-termcare,” says Guy Cunningham, vice president of sales for Clock Medical Supply. “Facilities that never used agency for staff are having to do so while being forced to pay higher wages for directly hired employees. 40
June 2022
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Additionally, staffing agencies are now having difficulty finding willing participants, which is adding further stress on our market.”
Longstanding issue More than 1.4 million people live in over 15,500 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes across
the nation. For years, those nursing homes have been underfunded and understaffed, often delivering inadequate care to their vulnerable residents, according to healthcare policy experts in a recent issue of Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. “The spread of the virus across the country introduced a new
