Nursing home shortages have been a rising problem since the Covid-19 outbreak began. Nearly all nursing homes are short staffed due to covid precautions, loss of funding, or nurses just not wanting to return completely said skilled nursing. This has become a substantial issue for patients in regards to not having enough assistance and the remaining staff overworking themselves. 

Assisted Living states that, “Nursing home services- experts predict that by the year 2050, there will be 15,000,000 seniors who need long-term care.” 

Nurses all around the world  have been affected by these shortages. Someone like a friend or family member who is in the field or even a CTE teacher for example can be affected . Mrs. Cook, a CTE teacher at Salem High School, said, “staffing is very limited right now because no one wants to work or become a nurse because of Covid really affecting us all including the patients and residents.” This just means less caregivers are available for the people we love and less time for the hard workers to get a break in these hard times. 

  The main consequence of these funding problems are that many nursing homes have had to cut staff and are planning on having to do more which Fierce Healthcare explained in their article. Nursing homes simply cannot afford to pay for all of the staff they need to stay open or maintain facilities. This is a result of the lack of funding and patients’ inability to pay for nursing home care themselves. Nearly all senior citizens rely on Medicare and Medicaid to help pay for their treatment in nursing homes. Assisted Living writes that 93% of senior citizens use Medicare insurance, which causes nursing homes to lose money due to the fact that medicaid does not pay for the entirety of a patient’s treatment. 

Many nursing homes are facing the fear of possibly having to shut down if the shortages become worse.  A website called Axios says, ”Many workers are being forced to work 24 hour shifts because there just aren’t enough people.” This source took a few polls from caregivers and nurses having them express how they feel in this time of crisis. The results show that 97% of nursing homes, and 100% of assisted living providers find it extremely difficult to hire new staff. Another poll taken from Axios states that 86% of nursing home staff and 77% of assisted living providers believe that their workforce situation has become significantly worse since June 2021.  

It is also proven that the nursing home circumstance has not only shown no signs of improvement, but likelihood of the situation repairing itself has declined tremendously. Fierce Healthcare says,  “Since June, 86% of nursing homes and 77% of assisted living providers said their workforce situation has somewhat or greatly worsened.” The result of the situation is forcing them to let a decreasing amount of people be admitted into hospitals and assisted living homes. 

Not just nursing homes are facing shortages but also in, home care help, assisted living areas, and retirement homes. They all are close in what they do and are all being affected by the staff shortage. Without assisted living care workers, many people who rely on someone to help them go on with their day will have no one. That being said, not only are nursing homes short staffed, but all nurse type facilities as well. 

ABC news had said, ”With U.S. job openings hitting a record high of 9.2 million, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are losing staff to other industries, or to other nursing facilities that can offer higher wages and better benefits, long-term care advocates and health care associations”. So because of the low wages from these companies, it’s forcing employees to quit so they can find better work. But unfortunately most nursing places are like this and they usually cannot find more staff. 

In hopes of finding a solution, the US government is distributing more vaccines in hope that nurses will return knowing everyone is safe and that they’re not putting anyone in danger. But on the bad side some people still don’t want the vaccine making the decision to mandate the vaccine harder. 

These staffing shortages are not getting any better and if nobody does anything about it, who knows if we will still have enough caregivers in the future. This is a serious problem and helping our staff with these hard times can be beneficial for everyone. With limited time and health care workers it should be a priority for everyone going forward.