Lawmakers will have nursing home policy in their sights during the upcoming Connecticut legislative session, with one proposed provision threatening a two-week admissions freeze for facilities that fail to meet the state’s staffing requirements.
State long-term care leaders acknowledged the need for reasonable enforcement measures Tuesday. But despite good intentions, the proposed admissions moratorium could cause horrible ripple effects throughout the state’s healthcare system, said Matthew Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities.
“Restricting admissions for a two-week period would be an overly broad and extremely harsh consequence that could jeopardize the financial stability of many quality operators in a manner not intended by proponents of the proposal,” Barrett told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Tuesday.
Those consequences would not only impact nursing homes and other eldercare facilities, but hospitals as well, Barrett predicted.
“The proposal,” he said, “would have disastrous consequences for a hospital discharge system already under distress and too often characterized by discharge delays due to the current nursing home staffing shortages.”
An uncertain future
Connecticut’s staffing mandate passed in 2021 and requires that facilities maintain enough care workers to provide 3.0 hours of care per resident per day.
Patient advocates in the state have pushed for this number and higher in recent years, testifying before state lawmakers about alleged neglect at understaffed nursing homes. Connecticut providers often have voiced a willingness to accept higher mandates, but also have repeated complaints about low and slow-to-adjust Medicaid reimbursement rates that are increasingly common across the country.
Last year, the state government passed further sweeping transparency and oversight legislation that built upon the regulatory power of the 2021 staffing mandate.
Not all potential changes are ominous for nursing homes, though. Barrett told The Connecticut Mirror that he hopes policymakers will legally limit the fees that nurse agencies can charge the state’s facilities — a policy that would imitate similar measures passed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. This could help ease the staffing crisis and reduce costs for facilities, he noted..
Still, nursing homes in Connecticut are facing the potential for an even more heightened regulatory atmosphere by the time the legislative session ends in May.
Barrett told McKnight’s that state associations are working to divert the harshest measures that could be handed down from the capitol.
“We hope to convince advocates, legislators and state officials that existing state and federal staffing enforcement measures already have harsh consequences for Connecticut operators and that an admissions moratorium will do much more harm than intended,” he said.
