After employees at a dozen nursing homes across Pennsylvania voted last month to authorize a strike, about 1,500 workers will hold a one-day strike next week to call attention to understaffing and other ongoing issues in the industry. According to SEIU Healthcare PA, the union workers will strike on July 27 at 21 facilities.
A nursing shortage — driven by the pandemic — has made life miserable for parents with profoundly disabled children. “What if I’m so exhausted that I make a mistake?”
The International Council of Nurses, or ICN, warned Thursday that the world is facing a nursing crisis. In the next few years, the organization said the worldwide workforce of 27 million nurses could be reduced by up to 50 percent.
The organization said that nursing groups in 64 nations reported unhappiness over pay and working conditions. The groups said violence and threats also caused nurses to leave their profession.
There is also the COVID-19 effect. The organization said these difficult conditions were having a great effect on the mental health of nurses around the world.
A nursing home accused of illegally “dumping” patients onto city streets and into ill-equipped homes in order to take in more lucrative COVID-19 patients will nearly double its nursing staff, allow increased oversight and pay $275,000 in penalties and costs to settle a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.
City Atty. Mike Feuer on Monday announced the legal agreement with the Lakeview Terrace skilled nursing facility, which he had accused of “sustained” and “intentional” misconduct in failing to adequately tend to some patients, while pushing others out of the 99-bed home.
The city alleged in its lawsuit that the facility west of downtown had an incentive to discharge long-term residents in order to make room for COVID-19 patients, who brought Lakeview Terrace much higher reimbursement payments from Medicare.
ARVADA, Colo. — It’s now been one year since Marie Nadeau has hugged, kissed or even held the hand of her 87-year-old mom.
“It’s extremely difficult,” Nadeau said. “I want to hold her, and she needs that, too.”
Although Nadeau’s mom, Fae, has now received both doses of the vaccine, residential care visits in Colorado are still limited, in Marie’s case, to visits through a window.
“We sit out in the cold when we do the window visits,” she said. “I don’t know why I can’t at least give her a hug.”
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says part of the problem is that while the vast majority of elderly residents are getting vaccinated, only about 50% of residential care staff are choosing to get the shot, even though they’re all eligible.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration faced a barrage of criticism in the wake of a report from his own state attorney general claiming that the state had undercounted Covid-19 nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent.
The state’s public death toll for nursing homes does not include residents who died from the coronavirus after having been transferred to hospitals, only deaths that occurred at facilities. Attorney General Letitia James’ report examined 62 nursing homes — about 10 percent of the state’s total — and found that New York’s approach left a large number of hospital deaths out of the state’s official nursing home death toll.
TEMPLE, Texas (KWTX) – In an agreement with the Bell County Public Health Department, Temple College has agreed to vaccinate nursing students and those volunteering to help administer vaccines at distribution centers.
Shelley Pearson with Temple College stresses that the list for volunteers at the vaccination hubs is entirely separate. Students who don’t volunteer will have to register with the county when more vaccine becomes available. In spite of the wait, Pearson says most students are anxious to get it done.
“They won’t receive any special treatment as far as going ahead or getting an appointment ahead of anybody else,” she said.
The effort to vaccinate some of the country’s most vulnerable residents against Covid-19 has been slowed by a federal program that sends retail pharmacists into nursing homes — accompanied by layers of bureaucracy and logistical snafus.
2021 is beginning a lot like how 2020 ended. Across the country, there is a steady increase in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. But there is another population that continues to show a record number of new cases: people who live in nursing homes.
A recent report by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL), representing more than 14,000 nursing homes and assisted living communities across the country, showed nursing homes in the U.S. saw a continued record of new cases. This surpassed previous peaks since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) started tracking nursing home cases.
Specifically, the Midwest region saw a 275 percent increase in weekly Covid-19 cases in nursing homes between September and November 2020 due to the community spread among the general population.
From Michigan’s biggest cities to its far rural areas, the state’s most vulnerable populations in nursing homes and long-term care facilities are finally starting to get COVID-19 vaccines — with officials hoping to see declines in the number of cases and deaths soon after both doses of the vaccines are administered to residents and staff.
For many, that day can’t come fast enough.
It brings the hope of hugging a parent, spouse, daughter, son or grandchild. It brings the anticipation of simply touching and holding a friend’s hand.
