COVID-19 and staffing shortages are endangering Kansas nursing homes. What to do

Nursing homes in Kansas are in a dire situation, due not just to COVID-19 but staff shortages — and the state’s unwillingness to regulate temporary staffing agencies.

Thirteen facilities have closed this year, leaving six Kansas counties without one. One nonprofit home, Village Manor in Abilene, is offering nurses signing bonuses of up to $15,000, and still has had just one applicant in four months.

“Horrible” is how Village Manor executive director Andy Sutter described his staffing, which has dropped 37% from previous levels. “Pretty much like everybody around. We’re no different than anybody else that’s in long-term care right now.

“People just don’t want to be in health care anymore. We’re burned out, we’re tired.”

Some 2,000 residents have died from COVID-19 in Kansas nursing homes, where nearly 88% of residents but just under 72% of staff are vaccinated. While that’s far better than the 56% of all Kansans who are vaccinated, unvaccinated caregivers continue to needlessly put elderly residents at risk of contracting the coronavirus. (The situation is even worse in Missouri, where only 61% of nursing home staff are fully vaccinated, among the lowest rates in the country.)

“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” says Debra Harmon Zehr, the president and CEO of LeadingAge Kansas, an association of 160 not-for-profit aging services providers. “And nobody knows what to do. And some of the levers that we could pull to help are slow in getting pulled.

“There just aren’t enough workers.”

How bad is it? When Zehr surveyed her member homes in October, “At that time, over 60% were not taking new admissions because of workforce shortages. And I’m sure it has grown since then.”

Moreover, she says temporary staffing agencies have popped up and stepped in to offer workers at vastly higher rates — which is good for the industry’s underpaid workers, but a crushing financial burden for the homes. In some cases, Zehr says, the agencies have pirated existing nursing home staff and sent them back into homes at higher rates. And the temp agencies “are not vetted at all, they’re not registered, they’re not regulated,” she says, adding that she and others have been unable to prompt the Kansas attorney general’s office to investigate.

The Legislature and governor should enact new regulations, training requirements and a public registry of the temp agencies. One nursing home operator we talked with, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the industry, said temp agency costs are killing nursing homes: A temporary certified nursing assistant, for example, can cost double what a home normally pays. Clearly the state needs to step in and help.

When nursing homes have to halt admissions, that causes a backlog in hospitals of patients headed for long-term care facilities.

All of this is a problem everywhere, of course. Maine, New Hampshire, Indiana and New York have sent in National Guard troops. “National Guard empties bedpans and clips toenails at nursing homes,” reads a New York Times headline.

Why not send in the Guard in Kansas, too? By any measure the nursing home situation in the state is a disaster. A spokesman for Gov. Laura Kelly said that would require a disaster declaration that would have to be approved by legislative leaders.

When lawmakers go back into session in January, they plan to busy themselves trying to outlaw teaching critical race theory, which isn’t taught now. The Republican majority also wants to make it impossible for businesses to make their own decisions about mandating employee vaccinations. They will consider the election-year tax rebate Kelly wants to hand out, and decide whether and how to cut the sales tax on food, which is one of the highest in the country.

The elderly also deserve their attention. Because while the threat of critical race theory wrecking the mental wellness of white children is imaginary, the risk to frail Kansans tended by unvetted as well as unvaccinated workers is real.

This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "COVID-19 and staffing shortages are endangering Kansas nursing homes. What to do."