The Biden administration finalized on Monday the first-ever minimum staffing rule at nursing homes, Vice President Kamala Harris announced.

The controversial mandate requires that all nursing homes that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding provide a total of at least 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident per day, including defined periods from registered nurses and from nurse aides. That means a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three registered nurses and at least 10 or 11 nurse aides, as well as two additional nurse staff, who could be registered nurses, licensed professional nurses or nurse aides, per shift, according to a White House fact sheet.

Plus, nursing homes must have a registered nurse onsite at all times. The mandate will be phased in, with rural communities having longer timeframes, and temporary exemptions will be available for facilities in areas with workforce shortages that demonstrate a good faith effort to hire.

The rule, which was first proposed in September and initially called for at least three hours of daily nursing care per resident, is aimed at addressing nursing homes that are chronically understaffed, which can lead to sub-standard or unsafe care, the White House said.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Oh, of course, they don’t want to pay people

    Even if they could…

    Were like 3 years deep into a nationwide nursing shortage and even hospitals can’t get staffed up.

    Biden is “creating jobs” that we literally don’t have qualified people to fill.

    Which is going to lead to lots of nursing homes being forced to close, and shitty nurses always having a place to land somewhere.

    You know what would help?

    If Biden had fixed our student loan shit show so more people are able to afford to be nurses.

    Like most of the headlines about Biden, it only sounds good if you don’t think further than the headline.

    Down the road this causes more problems than it’ll fix.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      1 month ago

      Shortage? No such thing as a labor shortage. Humans are not scarce.

      Pay more, and workers will follow. If they do not follow, then it’s not worth it to them. Make it worthwhile.

      Affordability? I guarantee if you pay enough they’ll be able to afford the profession!

      • ringwraithfish@startrek.website
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        1 month ago

        Pay enough and staff correctly and the people will come. My wife is an RN. I know directly from her that most places don’t do any of those things and still complain about shortages.

        Who knew profit driven medical care was a bad idea /s

      • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        We need more of these jobs to have similar paths like blue collar ones. Where you can learn being an apprentice to someone else and take classes on the clock and paid for by the employer. Makes it more accessible for more people and the employer knows how they’re getting trained, and that they’re gonna be ready to work once they’re done.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          That’s pretty much how the rest of the federal government works.

          At some point you really need a bachelor’s, and again a masters. But you can start entry level and move up.

          If we nationalized our healthcare system (like every other 1st world country) you’d likely get your wish. Along with a lot of other things the majority of voters want.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Shortage? No such thing as a labor shortage. Humans are not scarce

        They’re not.

        But nurses are, have been for years.

        It’s not a matter of pay, you can’t just snap your fingers and get a nursing degree…

        Affordability? I guarantee if you pay enough they’ll be able to afford the profession!

        Just go into tens of thousands of debt, and four years from now after a shit ton of nursing homes close well have plenty of nurses!

        Brilliant plan.

        • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          What does nursing school cost there? What type of nursing degree is needed to fill the roles that are short? Most nurses here don’t need a multi-year course. The entry level nurse position is a 6 month course. Do elderly care facilities need a higher degree than the entry level? Or does that not exist there? The higher nursing degree is a proper medical degree and of course takes years, but I don’t think that’s the kind of nurses needed for this is it?

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            What does nursing school cost there?

            America?

            This works better if you don’t ask 10 questions in a single paragraph bud.

            Ideally you’d just Google them tho, would be waaaaay faster.

            • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              I don’t think they’re asking questions because they don’t know / can’t find the answer, they’re asking questions to you specifically to try and coax you into thinking critically. It seems that they have failed, but that says more about you than them.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                And if they tell me where they’ll asking about, I’ll answer the first one.

                But there’s hardly any context, I’d have to ask for clarification for every single question they’re “just asking”.

                It’s a time sink, but I’d probably answer a couple if they kept it civil.

                And if you think that was the Socratic method…

                You might want to read up on it again.

                • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  They were completely civil, you’re the one slinging thinly veiled insults. Speaking of which, you should work on your grammar before needlessly insulting my intelligence. Your first sentence is a train wreck.

        • fitgse@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          A huge amount of nurses have left the field in the last decade. This has been due to poor wages, poor working conditions, and more pressure on nurses. They all burned out.

          During Covid, even when we were all clapping for nurses, instead of giving pay raises they’d rather hire contractors and travel nurses to fill positions because pay raises are permanent. A whole bunch of nurses I know left to do temporary travel, sometimes at the hospital they already worked at. This created huge amounts of resentment and nurses left in droves.

          The consolidation of our hospitals and health facilities into the hands of a few small companies is leading to a huge collapse of our healthcare, and it is all their own making.

          This all started 30 years ago when hospitals stopped being run by a chief medical officer and a chief nursing officer, and instead began being run by MBAs who only looked at numbers and short term profits. Drs and Nurses have no autonomy anymore and are treated like workers on an assembly line.

          Get rid of the MBAs. Break up HCA, Tenant, and the other big chains, require all health facilities to be non profits, and maybe we’ll see people who actually want to work in the medical profession again.

    • Molag_Baller@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 month ago

      Most of these positions do not require a college degree. They don’t need RN’s- a lot of these positions can be filled by high school kids. My wife and a lot of our friends in high school and college worked these jobs. My neighbor did in-home care for decades with no degree and recently chose to retire early because the pay wasn’t worth staying and she makes more money buying and selling antiques at conventions now.

      How many other qualified people have been forced out of the industry due to low wages?

      Your comments on Biden seem to indicate You’re either uninformed or purposefully spreading political misinformation. A quick internet search will tell you the Biden administration has forgiven $153 billion in student loans. It would be more if the Supreme Court hasn’t shut down his broader cancellation measures last year.

      Is he doing everything he can? Well I’ve seen tons of proposals for other measures to cap the tuition costs or change federal lending, but afaik just about everything would require a bill to be passed by Congress. This may shock you, but Biden can to vote in either the House of Representatives or the Senate so you need to find your own representatives, find their stances, and write to them about this (or anything else you care about).

      Unless you have some other proposal I haven’t heard of for executive action that could survive the supreme court?

      • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        You’re 100 percent right. My ex went to a short course to be a CNA for one of these facilities, she got paid 3 dollars less than I did. At the time I was a loser high school graduate that delivered packages for fed ex. Now I make 7 dollars more than I did back then, still a loser with just a high school degree and nothing else. I’m a scheduling admin for a company. This wasn’t even that long ago, like 2 years. They get paid criminally low for being in Healthcare.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        They don’t need RN’s- a lot of these positions can be filled by high school kids.

        Man, the article is right there

        The controversial mandate requires that all nursing homes that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding provide a total of at least 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident per day, including defined periods from registered nurses and from nurse aides. That means a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three registered nurses and at least 10 or 11 nurse aides, as well as two additional nurse staff, who could be registered nurses, licensed professional nurses or nurse aides, per shift, according to a White House fact sheet.

        CNA requirement vary by state, but I don’t know any where you don’t need a highschool degree.

        Among other things.

        https://www.practicalnursing.org/allied-healthcare/certified-nursing-assistant

    • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Reading this and your other comments, you always want to complain about everything and really don’t like Biden.

      Did you vote in the 2020 primary?

      • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Yeah, this is quite a “wah the profits!” Kind of an argument from them. I expect them to shit on everything Biden does at this point, but this approach is different.

        • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yes but it’s not going to make a difference for this election.

          I’m voting Biden and continuing to work on getting someone younger in the next democratic primaries and working on voting reform.

          Why do you ask?

    • Kage520@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      My sister is a nurse. Hospitals are constantly trying to put more and more workload per nurse than is feasible/safe. That sounds like it’s to your point, but it isn’t really. My sister was making like $25 per hour before covid. Her job was to take care of NICU babies. For $25 per hour, with a degree and a fair amount of student loan debt. And they keep adding responsibilities and assume they will work overtime “for the babies”.

      Why would anyone want to go to school to get into an underpaid field where literal babies’ lives are constantly in your hands, and the hospital is trying their hardest to decrease their nursing payout by decreasing nursing staff?

      We need regulation. Nurses are quitting the field because they cannot handle the stress and the pay certainly isn’t worth it.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That sounds like it’s to your point

        My point is we need more nurses.

        And the cost of our educational system prevents many from becoming nurses.