Nursing home staffing is worth studying

Finally, there’s some good news regarding the Holly Lane Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Nampa. It passed inspection, which is a huge accomplishment considering how far administrators and staff had to go to meet state and federal standards.

Compliance means that Holly Lane can take in new residents who are on Medicaid and Medicare. In other words, it can stay in business. More importantly, residents will continue to have a place to call home — with a serious upgrade in the quality of service.

Hat’s off to the people at Holly Lane, because reaching compliance must have been a tall challenge. The facility has been under close watch for some time, and fined for a long list of failures to meet health standards. A combination of surprise visits and official inspections since July found Holly Lane in violation of numerous standards. Staffing was inadequate, residents were not getting timely help when they called, residents were not being bathed often enough and the facility smelled of urine. Those were only a few of the lowlights.

Holly Lane was found falling far short of the standards even as late as October. So the ultimatum came. Get these problems fixed by this month, or face closing its doors – a horrible prospect for everybody. As troubled as the facility might have been, uprooting the residents there would have been difficult.

It’s a happy ending, of sorts. But this should not be the end of the story. The Department of Health and Welfare, which has done a commendable job staying on top of the Holly Lane problems, needs to continue its oversight. Since staffing at Holly Lane — and other facilities — seems to be a problem, we’d like to see the Health and Welfare Department be pro-active and take another look at its staffing guidelines for all long-term facilities.

Those working at Holly Lane and other facilities are not evil, heartless people. To the contrary, they take on jobs that are difficult — often with smiles on their faces. They do not take their jobs lightly or intend to neglect elderly people who need care.

The problem is, for whatever the reason, there are not enough staff people to provide the care. “Staffing is an issue in long-term care facilities across the country,” said Cathy Hart, an ombudsman for the Idaho Commission on Aging.

Often, local operations — including Holly Lane — have corporate offices in far-away states such as Tennessee or Texas. The goal of corporate bosses in any field, and not just nursing homes, is to keep profits up and costs down. That means keeping staff numbers as low as possible, which is a major cost-saver. If there are firm staffing guidelines, then corporate CEOs — and local administrators — would know what to expect.

It’s a high level of government oversight, for sure. But if stronger guidelines prevent the kind of horrifying stories we’ve seen at Holly Lane, then added oversight is worth the effort.

We’re calling on the Department of Health and Welfare, in conjunction with the IdahoBoard of Nursing, to put together a panel of involved individuals, including administrators, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nursing assistants to study the current state requirements for levels and types of nursing home staffing and determine whether those levels are adequate.

If changes are warranted, and based on what we’ve seen among local nursing homes, changes appear to be warranted, we would support changes to the administrative rules to increase levels of staffing at nursing homes before we have a real tragedy at one of our local nursing homes.