ST. LOUIS — St. Louis nursing homes can’t find the staff they need to safely operate.
Due to staffing shortages, most residents at St. Louis long-term care facilities are not receiving the care they need. This is according to the latest data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Long Term Care Community Coalition, which published data and analysis of staffing levels at the biggest nursing homes serving the broader St. Louis area.
The threshold for acceptable care at nursing homes is 4.1 nursing hours per resident day, according to the CMS, meaning that a resident should be receiving about four hours of nursing care daily at the very least.
In the 23 St. Louis-area nursing homes that CMS provided staffing data for, patients received an average of 3.28 hours per resident day, with only five nursing homes above the 4.1 daily hours-per-resident threshold as of May 1.
The challenge isn’t limited to St. Louis. While St. Louis’ average is lower than what the CMS determines to be safe, it’s actually close to the average in the United States — the national average of nursing hours per resident day is 3.62. The Long Term Care Community Coalition found that 70% of all nursing homes failed to meet the 4.1 nursing hours-per-resident threshold.
“It’s really, really scary for residents,” said Marjorie Moore, executive director of St. Louis-based long-term care advocacy group Voyce. “One hour of care per day that you're missing is a lot of things that you're missing. It's not necessarily just medical, but it’s having somebody turn you, somebody helping you get up in the morning, someone helping you either go to the bathroom or change you, feed you, things like that. And it’s not on the staff. The staff is so busy — they are really all doing what they can. But a lot of these places are so understaffed that it becomes really dangerous.”
See the full report with interactive graphics on statistics within St. Louis area nursing homes on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
