State Attorney General Alan Wilson is helping lead a coalition of 20 state attorneys general and groups that represent hundreds of nonprofit aging services providers in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a new nursing home staffing mandate.
Filed in the Northern District of Iowa, the complaint intends to overturn the mandate by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and vacate certain of the more onerous requirements in the rule, a news release from Wilson’s office says.
“This new staffing rule is impossible to implement based on the nursing shortage and will force the closure of nursing homes and raise costs at those that remain, devastating families financially and leaving people without the care they need,” Wilson said in the release.
The center’s new rule requires all federally funded nursing homes to produce a revised facility assessment and changes the minimum number of care hours per resident day. It requires all providers to provide 3.48 hours of direct nursing care per patient daily and to have a registered nurse present at all times.
The release says that the rule would require nursing homes nationwide to hire an additional 27,000 full-time registered nurses and 78,000 full-time nurse aides at a cost of more than $7 billion.
It also limits the use of licensed practical nurses, “who provide most of the direct patient care in nursing homes, potentially displacing thousands of these workers across the U.S.,” the release says.