Nursing homes in crisis as many low-wage employees quit

"Frustration is surging among the low-wage workers who make up the backbone of the nursing-home industry, as tens of thousands of their colleagues call out sick with Covid-19, inflaming shortages that already were at crisis levels," Rebecca Tan reports for The Washington Post. "Hailed as 'heroes' during the early months of the pandemic, these workers, most of whom are women and people of color, say they’re facing untenable levels of pressure. Government support has failed to end the crisis, advocates say, allowing care for the elderly and the infirm to worsen, forcing facilities to limit admission or close entirely and clogging up hospital beds. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nursing-home industry has lost more than 420,000 jobs since the start of the pandemic, reducing its workforce to the size it was 15 years ago."

There are many reasons for the shortages. Many workers retired early rather than deal with the pandemic, and others quit for higher-paying jobs that nursing homes can't compete with. That has compounded the temporary shortages caused by staff illnesses and resulted in a pressure cooker of stress for remaining workers, Tan reports. The problem has become so bad that many nursing homes and hospitals are telling Covid-infected workers to come back even if they may still be contagious.

"Even as the Omicron variant retreats, the staffing crunch will persist, nursing home leaders and unions say," Tan reports. "At community colleges, interest in skilled nursing courses has plunged, with some class sizes dropping to half what they were before the pandemic. Of those training to become nursing assistants, many are avoiding nursing homes, where they would earn a median annual wage of $30,120, according to federal data, and are looking instead for jobs as travel nurses or home health aides." That's particularly concerning as more Baby Boomers require skilled nursing.

"This is a crisis on steroids," David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School researcher who studies the economics of aging and long-term care, told Tan. "The long-standing issue of underinvesting and undervaluing this workforce is coming back to bite us."