A federal judge in Texas threw out a national mandate on nursing home staffing from the Biden era.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk sided with nursing homes regarding a rule that would have required them to add nurses to meet minimum staffing to patient ratios.
“The agency lacks authority to eliminate consideration of a facility’s nursing ‘needs’ when prescribing minimum staffing standards,” Kacsmaryk wrote, referring to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The plaintiffs, the American Health Care Association (AHCA), represented “approximately 15,000 nursing homes and long term care facilities across the country that provide care to approximately five million people each year,” according to a media release.
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“This unrealistic staffing mandate threatened to close nursing homes and displace vulnerable seniors,” Clif Porter, president and CEO of AHCA and the National Center for Assisted Living, said in a statement. “The court decision not only upholds the rule of law and balance of powers, but it protects access to care for our aging population.”
Porter is now calling on Congress to act, but says that “federal policymakers should not be dictating staffing hours but encouraging innovation and high-quality outcomes. The staffing mandate is a 20th Century solution that should be blocked by Congress once and for all.”
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In the U.S., “97.8% of nursing homes participate in Medicare and 95.4% participate in Medicaid,” Judge Kacsmaryk wrote in the ruling, meaning they must meet a “consolidated set of regulations.”
“As we have said from the beginning, nursing homes would love to hire more nurses and caregivers, and despite limited resources, we are doing everything within our power to grow our workforce,” AHCA’s Porter said in a statement.
“Even prior to the introduction of the staffing mandate, AHCA was offering federal policymakers a variety of workforce solutions that would help build a pipeline of new caregivers, attract them to long term care, and develop their skills and career,” he said.
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