Portland, Oregon — Healthcare workers account for just 10% of the American workforce. But they absorb nearly half of all non-fatal workplace violence injuries — 48%, according to a 2024 CDC study. And Congress, despite growing urgency, remains at a standstill over how to fix it. Two competing bills are circulating in Washington, each backed by major industry groups, each reflecting a fundamentally different theory of the problem. Two bills, two visions The Workplace Violence Prevention Act would require healthcare employers — including nursing homes — to develop and implement comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans. Advocates say the root cause…
Author: Sarah K
Washington, D.C. — A new peer-reviewed study is raising serious alarms about who would actually lose Medicaid if Congress expands work requirements nationwide — and the answer isn’t who most politicians assume. Published March 31 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study found that roughly 8.3 million adult Medicaid enrollees — about 50.4% of the 16.5 million adults ages 19 to 64 studied — would face disenrollment because they work too few hours. What makes the findings particularly troubling for long-term care advocates: those most at risk aren’t able-bodied individuals choosing not to work. They’re people with serious physical…
Anaheim, California — For years, nursing home clinicians treating tardive dyskinesia had to piece together a care approach on their own. There were no formal guidelines, no structured screening protocols, and no consensus on which treatments worked best in long-term care. A new expert panel just filled that gap. A multidisciplinary Delphi panel, convened by Neurocrine Biosciences, has released what’s being called the first-ever expert consensus recommendations for screening, diagnosing, and treating tardive dyskinesia (TD) specifically in long-term care settings. The findings were presented at the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine’s PALTC26 Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. Tardive…
Washington, D.C. — The federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid for more than 160 million Americans is trying to carry out one of the most ambitious regulatory agendas in its history — with roughly 1,000 fewer workers than it had two years ago. A new report lays out the tension clearly: the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services lost around 300 employees in the Trump administration’s sweeping federal workforce cuts last year. Since then, voluntary departures and retirements have pushed the total deficit to about 1,000 positions compared to 2024 staffing levels, according to data from the Office of…
New York — When it comes to keeping nursing home workers around long enough to actually make a difference, two operators say the answer isn’t complicated — it just takes consistency, visibility, and treating every employee like they matter. Executives from Journey Healthcare and Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center recently shared the staffing strategies that have worked for their organizations, at a time when turnover continues to drain resources and erode care quality across the long-term care industry. Start with Communication — and Mean It At Journey, Chief Operating Officer Kaci Lingle said the foundation is making sure every…
BOISE, IDAHO — Low Medicaid reimbursement rates are quietly reshaping who gets into a nursing home — and who doesn’t. Across the country, skilled nursing facilities are growing more selective about which patients they admit. With state Medicaid payments failing to keep up with rising costs, many operators are limiting the number of Medicaid residents they accept, prioritizing higher-paying Medicare and privately insured patients instead. The result: hospital beds that can’t discharge patients, nursing home beds that sit empty, and communities with fewer options for senior care. 10% of New York’s Beds Are Closed to Admissions In New York —…
Frankfort, Kentucky — A new state audit has exposed serious failures in Kentucky’s oversight of nursing homes, finding that the vast majority of required health and safety inspections were conducted late — some by more than four years — while hundreds of deceased residents remained incorrectly listed as Medicaid-eligible. Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball released the second part of the state’s annual audit for fiscal year 2025 on Monday, calling the findings a reflection of “serious problems the Commonwealth must address to ensure it is protected from waste, fraud and abuse.” Inspections Missed by Years, Not Days Federal law requires…
Windsor Locks, Connecticut — Nearly two months after a 93-year-old Alzheimer’s patient wandered out of a Connecticut nursing home undetected and later died from exposure, the fallout continues — and 17 residents are still waiting to find out where they’ll go next. Connecticut officials ordered Bickford Health Care Center, a 48-bed skilled nursing facility in Windsor Locks, to transfer all of its residents after the state Department of Public Health cited the facility for more than a dozen violations following the February 8 death of Margaret Healey. Healey left the building just before 2 a.m. Staff didn’t notice she was…
Cheyenne, Wyoming — Wyoming officials have a creative proposal for their share of a new $50 billion federal rural health program: invest it like an endowment and stretch it for decades. Whether the federal government will actually allow that is another question entirely. The state is set to receive $205 million in the program’s first year — $5 million more than it requested. Now it wants to deposit the bulk of that money into what it calls a Rural Health Transformation Perpetuity Fund, investing the principal in stocks and bonds and spending only 4% annually, in line with expected investment…
Washington, D.C. — Millions of Americans living in nursing homes and other long-term care settings already face enormous barriers to casting a ballot. Getting to a polling place is hard when you depend on others to move you. Finding a mail ballot requires navigating a system that often isn’t designed for people with mobility or cognitive challenges. Now, advocates warn, a federal bill moving through Congress could make voting all but impossible for hundreds of thousands of those residents. The legislation in question — the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act — would require proof of U.S. citizenship before…
