HHS Officially Rescinds Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Rule
The rule, enacted in May 2024, was put in place to improve the safety and quality of care for nursing home residents. The American Hospital Association (AHA) has repeatedly raised concerns that the requirements could exacerbate workforce shortages, lead to facility closures, and jeopardize access to care, especially in rural and underserved communities that often do not have the workforce levels to support these requirements.
As reported by MedPage Today, a rule that required a minimum number of healthcare staff in nursing homes has been rescinded. While some nursing home and hospital groups opposed the rule from its inception, nursing home consumer advocacy groups are dismayed by the reversal.
This article falls under Clinical/Patient Safety, Human Capital and Legal/Regulatory in the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) risk domains.
Clinical/Patient Safety
Risks associated with the delivery of care to residents, patients and other healthcare customers. Clinical risks include: failure to follow evidence based practice, medication errors, hospital acquired conditions (HAC), serious safety events (SSE), and others.
Human Capital
This domain refers to the organization’s workforce. This is an important issue in today’s tight labor and economic markets. Included are risks associated with employee selection, retention, turnover, staffing, absenteeism, on-the-job work-related injuries (workers’ compensation), work schedules and fatigue, productivity and compensation. Human capital associated risks may cover recruitment, retention, and termination of members of the medical and allied health staff.
Legal/Regulatory
Risk within this domain incorporates the failure to identify, manage and monitor legal, regulatory, and statutory mandates on a local, state and federal level. Such risks are generally associated with fraud and abuse, licensure, accreditation, product liability, management liability, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Conditions of Participation (CoPs) and Conditions for Coverage (CfC), as well as issues related to intellectual property.