Long-Term Care
Nursing homes that serve a large proportion of Medicaid residents are likely to employ fewer registered nurses and other staff, thus reducing quality of care, according to the results of a study reported in Health Services Research. Researchers found that such facilities operated below recommended staffing levels because of low reimbursements from Medicaid.
The authors recommended that Medicaid increase reimbursements to help nursing homes reach the recommended nurse staffing levels. However, the study noted that facilities would need further incentives than what Medicaid likely would contribute to raise nursing levels and called for assessing nurse staffing levels as part of larger pay-for-performance programs (Harrington et al., Health Services Research, June 2007).