Casey has been urging the Biden Administration to adopt staffing minimums for more than a year
Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, applauded today’s announcement that the Biden Administration is finalizing a new rule to establish nursing home staffing minimums and take additional steps to protect the safety of nursing home residents:
“Our Nation’s 1.2 million nursing home residents expect and deserve high quality care that prioritizes health, safety, and human dignity,” said Chairman Casey. “But for too long, many nursing homes have not met this threshold due to understaffing and inadequate enforcement. This rule, which both establishes staffing minimums and improves enforcement of nursing home violations, is an important step towards ensuring that all nursing homes are providing the care that all residents need and deserve.”
Senator Casey has spent his career fighting to improve the safety of nursing homes for their residents. He called on the Biden Administration to implement minimum staffing standards in nursing homes in February 2023. Senator Casey released a report in May 2023 detailing the a crisis in nursing home oversight due to severe staffing shortages at state survey agencies. He has previously introduced the Nursing Home Improvement and Accountability Act, which would require nursing homes to meet minimum staffing standards, ensure a registered nurse is available 24 hours a day, require a full-time infection control and prevention specialist, and provide additional resources through Medicaid to support these care and staffing improvements and raise wages. Last November, he sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services calling on the agency to finalize and implement the staffing standard rule.
Chairman Casey has also championed efforts to improve pay, benefits, and working conditions for nursing home and other long-term care workers. Last week, he introduced the Long-Term Care Workforce Support Act, which would ensure caregiving can be a sustainable, lifelong career by providing substantial new funding to support workers in every part of the long-term care industry. After introducing the bill, Casey held a hearing on the caregiving crisis and highlighted his new bill as a comprehensive way to tackle the challenges facing long-term care workers.
