A ONCE IN A GENERATION OPPORTUNITY Reimagining Nursing Homes

 

By Jeff Jerebker

Transforming nursing homes within the long-term care systems of support and services for frail elders and disabled can be analyzed as a three prong approach – Staffing, Architecture and Environment, and Culture. This can only be the result of a coordinated effort involving nursing home organizations, advocacy groups, Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement, regulation, tax policies, and favorable financing incentives, which over a period of time changes the landscape of long-term care. 

1. Staffing. Government policy and lawmakers can mandate staffing requirements but it will do little good unless we begin to solve the workforce shortage, high turnover and low recruitment and retention challenges. That will require something more fundamental and substantial than mandatory staffing. 

• Enhance proper pay and benefits for Direct Care Workers (DCW) through Medicaid and Medicare pass throughs and other imaginative approaches.
• DCWs must be regarded as a respected and honorable profession in serving its residents.
• Commitment to the development of the profession so that DCWs become a key ingredient in consistent assignment of staff, participation in care planning, and part of the leadership team within each neighborhood or unit of a nursing home.
• Increased educational and career opportunities for professional growth and human development.
• Housing and daycare offerings, education in language skills and conflict resolution are examples of workforce ingenuity.

2. Architecture and Environment (A&E)

• A&E has been undervalued as to its prominence in managing disease outbreaks, resident rights to individual space and privacy, and as an essential building block to person-centered care. Some say that good care can happen in any setting and poor care can happen in a modern one. True to an extent, but the pandemic revealed that the old model totally failed.
• There needs to be a coordinated effort to enhance A&E for both the existing inventory of nursing homes as well as promoting new models, particularly small house models.  
• The enhancement of the home and community based services programs will also encourage traditional nursing homes to improve A&E, and new models hopefully will provide novel approaches and choices for those needing support and services.
• Coordination of reimbursement changes and tax advantages to incentivize new A&E.

3. The Culture of Support and Services

Out of this triad, culture is the most abstract. How to mandate an empowering culture without being overly restrictive is an enigma not to be dismissed lightly. Every person is unique and every nursing home community is likewise. It’s the opportunity to finally create a perceptible culture for the person-centered care movement to thrive and develop.

How services are provided, resident participation in their own life experience, staff growth, and application of servant leadership has a lot to do with a unique organic culture. Without these elements it is highly unlikely that workforce and A&E will change significantly. Servant leadership and community development principles along with visionary and supportive ownership are critical in this area. Whether for profit, or non profit, or government.

The Nursing Home Reform Act (OBRA) of 1987, an incomplete milestone, attempted to reform nursing homes. Key components of OBRA were: 

• nursing assistants now required certification, becoming CNAs that ensured enhanced competency testing and training 
• elevated resident rights to the highest level of certification requirements
• introduced the concept of highest practical physical, mental, and psychosocial wellbeing of every resident in the nursing home
• federal certification surveys were to be more resident focused and outcome oriented

Incomplete because in some ways, as well intentioned as it was, OBRA did not get to the root of the problems: the hegemony of institutional culture, a deeply flawed architecture, and the challenges of the gross inequity of the workforce. 

33 years subsequent to OBRA’s passage the perfect storm hit that exposed the brittleness inherent in these fundamental systems not being addressed. Resident rights did not include the right to a private room, a private bathroom, good ventilation or fresh air; and more consistent assignment of staff with aproppo reimbursement and regulation financing and supporting it. 

OBRA did not address the specter of a rooted caste system creating acute staff shortages and high turnover. The turnover rate of nursing assistants pre OBRA is substantially the same as certified nursing assistants post OBRA.  

The tragic reality of the pandemic creates another once in a generation opportunity to finally get to the existential issues that OBRA did not reach. Is it even feasible in this divisive era for ageism and ageist attitudes to abate? Can stakeholders with different agendas learn to work together for this essential transformation?

There is no need to vilify or single out the nursing home operators, professionals or even ownership. Scapegoating is futile. Some of the most dedicated people I know work tirelessly for the betterment of elders lives in a profession that is known for its failings and its deficiencies. Yet, it is not recognized for it’s often heroic work that goes unnoticed and unpublicized.

Basically, since 1965 the entirety of the system accepted an institutional A&E, with cost containment being the primary driver of policy and legislation. Nursing home ownership and management figured out how to survive and even profit from it.  With the pandemic we now realize the incremental changes of the past were not sufficient to avoid this tragedy.

 I consider the approaches by some well intended advocates to propose tougher enforcement and mandatory staffing levels (nursing only) as superficial. Similar to OBRA’s shortcomings, these approaches still don’t get to the core of the challenges. This is analogous to treating the symptoms of an illness and not its root causes. We need to aspire to more than patchwork, more than incremental changes; it’s time to address its essence for real transformation. 

I have my own ideas as to some legislative and policy redesigns. However, I am more about the process of change;  an inclusive one encompassing all the stakeholders – elders, DCW, advocates, geriatricians and gerontologists, ownership and policy makers that will shape and create a new nursing home that is part of the long-term care continuum. A process where the elders right to excellent care and meaningful and dignified quality of life are the north star and acts as the glue that holds the process together. Otherwise it will be no different than 1987 and these festering inadequacies will remain with only marginal improvements.

If all that results from the COVID19 tragedy in nursing homes is more punitive enforcement, ownership transparency and mandatory nursing staffing levels then the opportunity for true holistic transformational change in nursing homes would be lost. 

Jeff Jerebker was the Founder and CEO of Pinon Management, former Treasurer of the Pioneer Network, Co-Founder of the Live Oak Project, and Board Member of Kallimos Communities.