Phil Fogg, CEO of Marquis Companies and Consonus Healthcare, and board chairman of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), shared several points during the 2023 Congressional Briefing in advocacy of long-term care workforce solutions.
Fogg asserts that our profession is not opposed to increased staffing requirements; however, the timing of a minimum staffing rule would only make a bad situation worse. Should the White House implement a mandate on staffing for long-term care, they would only compound the existing issues faced by those in long-term care operations. The following considerations should be made in light of a staffing mandate: funds to support those affected by the mandate to support with increased recruiting costs and wages, along with enabling a waiver program if the supply of adequate staff is simply not available within a given market.
“With the current workforce climate, the long-term care industry is facing several challenges related to staffing: access, quality, and cost. Limited access to staff results in caps on facility census, which reduces access to long-term care. Compounding this challenge is the lower quality of care available when agency staffing must to utilized to meet staffing requirements. And finally, the costs of inflated wages and increased recruiting costs are being felt by long-term care providers across the board” Fogg said.
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