A bill allowing the Minnesota Department of Human Services to establish a temporary staffing pool for skilled nursing facilities, assisted living communities and other congregate settings passed the Democratic-Farm-Labor Party-controlled Minnesota House of Representatives Thursday.
State Sen. Jim Abeler (R) proposed a companion bill in the Senate.
Under the fill, a facility or program would be able to seek one-time assistance from the pool – for up to 21 days – only after it has used all resources available to obtain temporary staff but can’t meet the need.
Members of the temporary staffing pool would be deployed by the state commissioner of Human Services. Members would not be state employees and would be provided at no cost to the facility or program.
According to data released in October from the Long-Term Care Imperative, 23,000 positions in assisted living and skilled nursing were unfilled, up from 8,000 open positions reported in a survey reported from a June survey. Of the 23,000 open positions, more than 10,000 of them were positions for nursing assistants / unlicensed professionals working in assisted living, and more than 4,000 were such positions in nursing facilities. The group is a collaboration of LeadingAge Minnesota, which is the state partner of the national LeadingAge association and also of Argentum, and Care Providers of Minnesota, which is the state affiliate of the American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living.
State Reps. Kristn Bahner (DFL), Dave Pinto (DFL) and Jennifer Schultz (DLF) sponsored the legislation in the House.
“Our work to defeat COVID-19 is headed in the right direction, but we still have a crisis remaining that frankly existed well before the pandemic. Residents in our nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and group homes have unacceptable staffing levels, putting them at risk of not receiving the level of care they deserve,” Schultz stated.
“A temporary pool will help us target staffing resources to facilities with the most urgent needs to protect residents. There are also a variety of waivers we need to urgently enact to allow services and programs to proceed without interruption,” she added.
Care Providers of Minnesota supports the measure. Patti Cullen, the group’s president and CEO, told McKnight’s on Friday that the emergency temporary staffing pool would serve as a bridge to an ultimate solution of a “significant ongoing rate increase that will allow our settings to be competitive in the employment marketplace and allow us to recruit and retain our own staff members.”
She added: “The temporary staffing pool, funded until July 30, 2022, should give long-term care communities experiencing the greatest staffing crisis the breathing room they need to stay open while we wait for action from our Legislature on the more sustainable solution.”
In addition to establishing a temporary staffing pool, the bill also would allow the DHS and the Minnesota Department of Health to reinstate a series of waivers to provide flexibility and remove barriers toward delivering services. Schultz said that the bill would extend waivers for the MDH, including those related to the hospital construction moratorium or bed capacity restrictions, nursing home bed moratoriums, and licensing fees for hospitals and nursing homes that can show hardship.
