Health Affairs Publishes Two Age-Friendly Health Papers in March Issue
Health Affairs has published a paper ahead of print online as part of its Age-Friendly Health series. The study, "Nursing Homes Increasingly Rely On Staffing Agencies For Direct Care Nursing,” is in the March Issue, along with a paper on "New CMS Nursing Home Ownership Data: Major Gaps And Discrepancies."
The Age-Friendly Health series aims to inform health policies and covers new issues related to building more equitable, high-quality health systems for older adults.
Nursing Homes Increasingly Rely On Staffing Agencies For Direct Care Nursing
John R. Bowblis, Christopher S. Brunt, Huiwen Xu, Robert Applebaum, David C. Grabowski
This article examines trends in the use of staffing agencies among nursing homes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers find that between 2018-19, on average, 22.5 percent of nursing homes used any direct care agency nursing staff, but during 2022, this number rose to 49.1 percent. Bowblis and coauthors also determine in 2022 that there was “significant variation in the use of agency staff across states.” The share of hours worked by agency staff also increased from 3.2 percent in 2018 and 2019 to 11 percent in 2022.
The authors note that policy makers need to consider postpandemic changes to the nursing home workforce as part of nursing home reform, as increased reliance on agency staff may reduce the financial resources available to increase nursing staff levels and improve the quality of care.
New CMS Nursing Home Ownership Data: Major Gaps And Discrepancies
Amanda C. Chen, Robert J. Skinner, Robert Tyler Braun, R. Tamara Konetzka, David G. Stevenson, David C. Grabowski
This article explores how nursing home ownership has become increasingly complicated, partly because of the growth of facilities owned by institutional investors such as private equity (PE) firms and real estate investment trusts (REITs). The administration’s 2022 nursing home reform plans included a series of data releases by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on ownership. However, the authors' evaluation of this data identified several gaps.
Comparing the public data with information in proprietary databases, the authors find, for instance, that “only a third of PE and fewer than a fifth of REIT investments identified in the proprietary files were also present” in the CMS data. Although the new data represent an important step forward, the paper highlights additional steps to ensure that the data are timely, accurate, and responsive and notes that "transparent ownership data are fundamental to understanding the adequacy of public payments to provide patient care, enable policy makers to make timely decisions and evaluate nursing home quality."
Listen to the related Health Affairs Podcast: Amanda Chen on New CMS Nursing Home Ownership Data.
Visit the Health Affairs Age-Friendly Health series.
Go to the Health Affairs February issue.
Learn more about JAHF's support of Health Affairs.
