Ms. Smith Sloan is president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit providers of services for older adults. She said the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the underinvestment by both federal and state governments in the nursing home industry.
“The federal government and its state partners share the responsibility for inadequate funding, low staff wages and failure to measure and improve quality using the most robust evidence,” she wrote. “Quality of care and staffing work hand-in-hand — and neither can be achieved without sufficient funding.”
Her four suggestions on addressing the crisis:
1. Fairly compensate front-line staff.
2. Expand the pipeline of applicants seeking careers in the industry with training and apprenticeship programs.
3. Make immediate changes in immigration policy to allow foreign staff hired by long-term care communities to arrive in the U.S. quickly.
4. Address price-gouging by temporary staffing agencies.
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