Nursing home operators have not only admitted an increasingly frail number of patients, they’ve also hired a correspondingly larger pool of clinicians to treat them, according to a decade-long research effort.
A University of Texas team found that the share of full-time clinicians on staff — including physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants — at nursing homes increased from 26% to 45% between 2008 and 2017. The largest increase was among nurse practitioners, which jumped 125% — from 1,986 to 4,479 during the study period. The findings used a 20% national sample from Medicare data on long-term care residents.
“Since patients of full-time providers have fewer ER visits and hospitalizations, it is less disruptive for nursing homes, as is having a provider available to respond to questions from the nursing home staff,” lead study author James S. Goodwin, M.D., told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “In addition, nursing home residents and their families also prefer providers who are available.”
Full findings were published in the December edition of the Journal of PostAcute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
From the January/February 2022 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
