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Nursing homes await staffing assistance

Free Press - 10/24/2021

Oct. 24—MANKATO — Recently proposed staffing reinforcements can't come soon enough for beleaguered nursing homes.

Gov. Tim Walz recently announced he'd put the National Guard on alert along with using other options to help fill gaps at long-term care facilities.

Facilities in south-central Minnesota and across the state are struggling to keep and recruit workers, a challenge compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Low staffing prevents some hospital patients from being transferred into long-term care facilities to recover. It puts more strain on hospital systems, which face staffing challenges of their own.

Walz's proposal to shore up long-term care staffing is designed to alleviate pressure on hospitals. Help from the National Guard will take time, though, said Patti Cullen, president/CEO at Care Providers of Minnesota.

"They haven't been deployed yet," she said. "We're a long ways away from any of that."

Some relief in the nearer term could come via emergency staffing pools. The state can contract with traveling staff to help in a handful of facilities sooner, Cullen said.

Another option likely to come before the National Guard — which began assisting at COVID-19 test sites Monday — could come through an online staffing tool called Aladtec. Facilities facing staffing crises could use Aladtec within the coming weeks to find workers who fit the hours they need.

The tools could have bigger roles if upcoming federal requirements end up mandating vaccinations for long-term care facility staff with few to no exceptions. Any workers who choose to quit rather than get vaccinated would leave facilities with even lower staffing.

More finalized details on the requirement, like whether unvaccinated workers can undergo regular testing like state workers have the option to do, are expected either later this week or next week.

As facilities wait for any staffing assistance and news on the mandate, Cullen said they're stretched and exhausted statewide.

"It's a tense time right now," she said. "They're doing every trick they can think of and people are still walking."

Tom Goeritz, the administrator at St. John's Lutheran Home in Springfield, said now is probably the most fragile time for staff morale during his 45 or so years in the industry.

The facility is competing with a whole lot more employers for workers these days, resulting in staff taking on more shifts in exchange for incentives and bonuses.

"We've always competed with health care, hospitals and clinics," he said. "We always had that, but I cannot remember a time when we've been challenged by every other industry out there."

The Springfield skilled nursing facility has 65 beds. Most of the time it runs at 57 to 58 beds filled, Goeritz said, but it recently dropped down to 53 due to there not being enough staffing to care for more.

"We were not admitting for a little while, and now we're very selectively admitting," he said, meaning they're prioritizing admissions from the immediate area.

Goeritz recently met with administrators from facilities in Mankato, New Ulm, Sleepy Eye and other cities in the region. What he heard from them was much the same as what he's seeing in Springfield.

He could use about 10 more staff on top of the roughly 150 he has now, while other admins he heard from could use up to 40. The National Guard option and other staffing proposals might help in emergencies, but he said low staffing is a long-term issue in need of long-term solutions.

"That's generally considered short-term, and we need permanent," he said. "Someone to help me for a week isn't going to cut it."

Even the short-term assistance proposals will take time to implement, and it's unclear how many workers without jobs will turn to long-term care jobs when they do re-enter the workforce. Waiting for more staffing is frustrating, Goeritz added, because it means more patients who need skilled nursing care aren't being admitted.

Further solutions could come from the Minnesota Legislature, although none appear likely to come anytime soon. As part of Walz's announcement, he urged legislators to "step up and be an equal partner" in dealing with the state's latest wave of COVID-19 by helping hospitals and nursing homes.

Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola

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