Among the critical issues facing state lawmakers this session is the obligation to address severe workforce shortages in senior care. The state must take action or risk collapse of the sector throughout Minnesota.
At the start of the year, 23,000 caregiving jobs – approximately 20 percent of all positions – remained vacant. The impact has been staggering. Seventy-eight percent of nursing homes and 35 percent of assisted living facilities continue to turn away seniors who need their services due to staffing constraints.
Ten nursing homes in Minnesota have been forced to close their doors since the beginning of the pandemic, including three in 2022 alone. Just last week, county commissioners voted to close Ramsey County Care Center in Maplewood due to insurmountable operational costs. Ninety-five residents must be relocated. The impact of one closure is staggering, and dozens more face staffing crises that could lead to closure if lawmakers don’t act soon.
Senior care communities are stuck in a vicious cycle. Inadequate state funding means we can’t raise wages to recruit and retain caregivers. We can’t find the workers we need to care for the growing number of seniors who need care. And that means we can’t admit new residents into our settings. Fewer residents mean senior care settings cannot generate the revenue needed to operate. This is a sector that is on the brink of collapse, and we need state lawmakers to act now, before it’s too late.
A collapse of the senior care sector will have wide-ranging consequences; Minnesota seniors and their families will have difficulty accessing care they need when they need it in their home communities and hospitals may continue to experience backups as they struggle to find appropriate settings to discharge patients.
You may be asking why senior care settings don’t just raise caregiver wages on their own, just as many other employers have done. The answer lies in the role lawmakers play in controlling funding for senior care. State legislators set both Medicaid and private pay rates for nursing homes. If wages are going to permanently increase, funding must come from the state.
While funding for assisted living and other care options is different from nursing homes, the fundamental problem doesn’t change – the State of Minnesota is a critical partner in improving Medicaid reimbursement rates to support improved caregiver wages.
[image_caption]Patti Cullen[/image_caption]
Much of the legislative discussion has been focused on one-time “hero pay” bonuses for frontline workers. While a bonus is long overdue and would show appreciation for the hardworking caregivers who sacrificed much during the pandemic, we need permanent solutions to keep these workers, to recruit workers to fill open positions, and ultimately to ensure access to care for seniors.
[image_caption]Kari Thurlow[/image_caption]
As of this year, one million Minnesotans are 65 or older, and 70 percent of them will require some form of senior care by 2030. We can either invest in our elderly loved ones and their caregivers or watch as this essential sector collapses and access to long-term care diminishes. We hope the choice is clear for Minnesota’s leadership.
Patti Cullen is the CEO of Care Providers of Minnesota. Kari Thurlow is the CEO of LeadingAge Minnesota. Together, Care Providers of Minnesota and LeadingAge Minnesota make up the Long-Term Care Imperative.
Let’s be totally honest as to what happened during the COViD scare, sick with COViD, elderly folks were sent back to LTC facilities. Minnesota led the country in percentage of deaths attributed to LTC facilities. Who would want to work there ? Confining workers in small areas filled with COViD patients, is not a recipe for full employment. Making LTC facilities more safe may help.
1)”Minnesota led the country in percentage of deaths attributed to LTC facilities.”
Who, other than maybe a right wing propaganda organ, has any statistical data of the number of deaths “attributed to LTC facilities”? People died of COVID and were at high risk because they were elderly or immuno-compromised or both, not “because” they were in a long term care facility. We now know that the risk of contracting the disease was statistically greater if you were confined to long term care and that was because you were 1) elderly and 2) had no family willing or able to care for you at home.
2) “during the COViD scare”
It was and is a pandemic not a “scare” or a “hoax.”
3) “sick with COViD, elderly folks were sent back to LTC facilities.”
Sent back by whom? From where? What we know is that it was not the sick elderly who brought COVID into these facilities but the staff, most of whom were and still are notoriously underpaid. That’s the reason for this opinion piece. During the first period of the quarantine shut down beginning about two years ago, many of these staff were quarantined at these long term care facilities with their patients. When that ended after a few weeks, these staff went home to their families and into the community and returned to work carrying and spreading COVID among their patients. None of these facilities maintained the more rigorous standards as hospitals which of course had their own set of problems and holdouts against masking and getting vaccinated when that became available.
I will agree that most people who end up in a nursing home or “long term care facility” were “sent there”; who goes into a nursing home by their own volition? By the time you are “sent” to a nursing home, you are no longer have the mental competence to make that decision. Making nursing homes safer is going to help and the way that’s done is by paying a living wage to attract professional, qualified and skilled staff workers. Unfortunately, the shadowy owners of nursing homes can’t be counted on to do that, so as usual, the public will have to foot the difference between the minimum wages offered by the “industry” and a living wage needed to attract qualified personnel.
“What we know is that it was not the sick elderly who brought COVID into these facilities but the staff”
“None of these facilities maintained the more rigorous standards as hospitals”
“the shadowy owners of nursing homes can’t be counted on to do that”
Cites please. I’m calling BS, especially the first two unfounded accusations.
Not “unfounded accusations.” There have been studies. Such as:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33323526/
From the study:
“The full extent of staff connections between nursing homes and the role these connections serve in spreading a highly contagious respiratory infection is currently unknown ”
Well, that certainly proves nothing. Visitors have been spreading COVID since they were allowed back and hospitals have sent many people with COVID back to care facilities because COVID by itself won’t keep a person in the hospital. Those persons are placed in COVID areas to try and limit the spread, but their are not separate staff to care for them.
In our area, there is an older than average population. We are also in a county where vaccination rates are good. from what I can tell, the assisted living and one nursing home in our town have been doing a good job of keeping the residents and employees safe. There is a shortage of workers and adjusting the pay would help. At present we have friends and neighbors who are in poor health who either are on long waiting lists for, or can’t afford the care they need. Not a good situation.
This was always going to be the case, from the moment warehousing the elderly became the defacto methodology for elder care. What’s happened is that the pandemic has thrown a monkey wrench in what was supposed to be a once in a lifetime gravy train, as largest generation in American history aged into the target range. At most, this will be a problem for a decade or so, then the numbers will begin to normalize as the glut of baby Boomers needing care begins to diminish. The larger question is what will become of the overbuilt senior care industry once that day comes, and how to create a better system going forward.
Lifetime gravy train? Lol. Seniors are in the category often times of poverty income. Most jobs when they can’t get workers, raise the pay. Here is other big thing most people overlook: most Americans even if middle class cannot afford on their own, nursing homes or assisted living. Most eventually have to go on Medicaid. Many of the quality places now require you to pay private pay meaning out of your pocket before being able to access the Medicaid spot. So you have to either have a home you can sale or enough cash/assets to sell to pay for 1 year.
That social security check and even if you have a pension is going to be tight if you can do it; many can no longer afford to buy a home or if they do it is later in life, meaning less equity to cash in and a mortgage and rent to pay.
Many businesses no longer offer pensions; wages have not kept up with the cost of living and many seniors on limited budgets have increased property taxes and are just over the scale to qualify for the state property assistance. You really need to do a ride along with a public health nurse. And this will also be a problem for future generations.
Thinking you misinterpreted my commentary. YES, it’s outrageously expensive, that’s the point of elder warehousing. The gravy train is for the corporate entities created to profit from this one time demographic glut, resulting from the aging of the largest generational cohort in US history. The main point being it is and was always designed to collapse, as it’s built upon an unsustainable model, when the population demographics get back in better balance, there simply won’t be a population to support the profit model these places are designed to exploit. Better for us to come up with a better idea than shoving all our seniors into institutional settings so the rest of us can pretend they don’t exist, than pour money into saving this disastrously exploitative system, wouldn’t you agree?
The legislature is too stingy with caregiver compensation, as they have been my entire life. Historically, caregiving was the poorest paying profession there is, because the state sets rates that are far below a living
wage.
The refusal also to pay the “essential” workers is consistent with a Minnesota state policy that degrades and underpays women and the poorest of workers. It is a travesty. It is not “conservative”. It keeps the quality of care lower and makes the best caregivers go to McDonalds to work, even if their empathy and skills are perfect for the difficult job of caregiving.
Minnesota officials who had a special needs, or chronically ill family member have been willing to promote better pay and standards for these folks– Republicans, not so much. They don’t value the people as much as the low tax ideas (even though they aren’t employing all the caregivers, they are setting the rates).
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” State legislators set both Medicaid and private pay rates for nursing homes. If wages are going to permanently increase, funding must come from the state.”
I totally agree that instead of spending money on hero pay, and having the endless debate on who should qualify and how much they should get, let’s use the money to fix the problems we have moving forward, which are going to get worse as inflation increases.