REGIONAL- Going into a legislative session with a $17.6 billion surplus to spend, Minnesota’s nursing home industry was hopeful Minnesota legislators would come through in a big way to help with a growing financial crisis that has forced closure of 15 nursing homes in the past year.
But it appears those hopes will go unrealized, as the DFL-controlled House has only allocated $3.9 million toward nursing home support in the budget, according to senior care advocates.
Nursing homes received some additional one-time assistance during the COVID pandemic, as the state temporarily raised reimbursement rates and approved $500 million in payments to frontline workers, which included nursing home employees.
But the pandemic brought down a big hammer on the industry in the form of employee flight. Rather than work in environments where residents were hard hit by COVID and caregiving became exceptionally tedious, thousands upon thousands of Minnesota nursing home workers quit their jobs, and facilities have not recovered. The Long-Term Care Imperative (LTCI), a partnership of advocacy organizations Leading Age MN and Care Providers of Minnesota, reports that there are 20,000 vacant caregiver positions in senior care facilities.
Those staffing shortages have forced facilities to cut back on the number of residents they can take, directly threatening the bottom line. While 17 nursing homes have closed since 2020, the impact of staffing shortages has reduced capacity by 2,597 beds over the same time period, the “equivalent of 50 average-sized nursing homes,” LTCI reports. In October, 11,000 requests for nursing home care were denied.
And nursing homes are further threatened by a huge lag in the receipt of state reimbursement of 15 to 27 months.
At the end of the 2022 legislative session, the DFL and Republicans had brokered a deal to allocate about $1 billion from the then $9 billion surplus to address the nursing home crisis before the entire budget deal collapsed, leaving the surplus unspent and carried over to this year. No such collaborative agreement to help the industry has been engineered this session.
And when Leading Age MN posted to its Twitter feed on April 21 that “the House Human Services bill has only $3.9 million in new $ for nursing homes,” that apparently didn’t sit well with the Minnesota House DFL Majority, which responded: “Fact: The House DFL Majority Caucus is providing nursing homes with the largest amount of funding they’ve received in state history. We’re also significantly increasing wages for the people who care for our loved ones. Those who say otherwise are misleading Minnesotans.”
A Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial published last week indicated that the DFL majority contends that 2015 reimbursement payment reform will automatically adjust for cost increases, bringing in $847 million over the next four years in both federal and state dollars. But nursing home industry reps counter that the reimbursement delays of up to two years means the impact of the reforms will be delayed, and that more nursing homes could close in the meantime. The reforms also won’t cover all the costs for traveling nurses, something nursing homes have been dependent on to cover shortages. The Star Tribune editorial board concluded that, “These facilities are now facing an existential threat from financial headwinds, and Minnesota lawmakers need to take heed and act swiftly.”
On Monday, Republicans attempted to funnel more money to nursing homes through an amendment to the omnibus jobs, economic development, labor and industry finance bill. The amendment would have reallocated $68.97 million from five miscellaneous grant programs for nursing home stability grants for worker recruitment and retention. The amendment failed along party lines.
The CEO of RiverView Memory Care in Crookston, who announced in March that the facility would be closing, had sobering words for the Star Tribune editorial board.
“I don’t know of a nursing home in our state that isn’t in trouble; it’s just the degree of trouble they’re in,’’ said Carrie Michalski.