Feds Report Serious Shortage Of Registered Nurses At Many Ga. Nursing Homes

Nearly 1.4 million people are cared for in skilled nursing facilities in the United States. When nursing homes are short-staffed, nurses and aides scramble to deliver meals, transport bedbound residents to bathrooms and answer calls for pain medication, Kaiser Health News reports.

Pixabay Images

An analysis of Medicare data shows that nearly half of Georgia nursing homes recently were found “below average’’ or “much below average’’ in their staffing levels of registered nurses.

RNs are the highest-trained caregivers required to be on staff in a nursing home, and they supervise other nurses and aides. Medicare mandates that every facility have a registered nurse working at least eight hours every day, Kaiser Health News reported this month.

Of Georgia’s 346 nursing homes that were rated, 163, or 47 percent, received “much below average” or “below average” ratings of RN staffing based on Medicare data from January through March of this year, as reported by KHN.