Lawmakers in Connecticut appear ready to toughen their state’s nursing home staffing minimum next year, even before they have fully tested a 3.0 hours per-day requirement currently in play.
The state Department of Health last month proposed new standards for nursing homes that would require various direct care staff to provide a combined hourly total of care as dictated by a 2021 state law. It increased the minimum from a previous 1.9 hour daily requirement.
At a hearing to discuss those regulations this week, lawmakers from both parties appeared ready to push ahead with a higher, 4.1 hour daily minimum during their 2024 session. Members of the Legislature have debated that number in previous sessions, including this year’s, but failed to get it past the finish line.
For now, local nursing home leaders and advocacy groups said they are less concerned about being able to meet a general 3.0 daily minimum than they are with the details dictating who must fill those hours and how to pay for the needed workers.
During the virtual hearing, LeadingAge Connecticut President Mag Morelli said rules creating separate ratios for CNA and LPN nursing categories were not authorized by the 2021 law.
“In fact, the Legislature considered but rejected these categories and modeled the fiscal impact of the minimum staffing legislation on a 3.0 minimum staffing ratio without these breakout categories,” she said. “By making it so restrictive and requiring so many hours of [nurse aide care], it caused a lot of angst for people. You can’t mix and match, you can’t blend. You have two separate ratios, and it just makes it so much more difficult.”
Craig Dumont, administrator of the 5-star Cheshire House in Waterbury, said that he did not oppose the new regulations but pleaded for better state funding, given that providers in the state have not seen a Medicaid cost-of-living rate adjustment in five years.
“If it’s unrealistically regulated, underfunded and not resident-centered, there’s only one inevitable result: system failure,” he testified. “Those facilities that cannot sustain will close.”
Dumont’s comments were offset by family and residents who testified to the impacts of short staffing in Connecticut, with emotional stories seeming to wear at state legislators.
Reps. Jane Garibay (D) and Mitch Bolinsky(R), members of the legislature’s Aging Committee, said they would support the 4.1-hour requirement during next year’s session.
“Personal care for our residents is not a luxury. It’s a necessity and the neglect that we see and the stories that we hear about people that are dying tragically, it’s completely real,” Bolinsky said.
