When it comes time for your family member to transition to living in a long-term care facility, you choose carefully. You want them to get the best care available. But a crushing mandate implemented by the Biden Administration is threatening long-term care providers and the vulnerable seniors that they serve.
As Texans and conservative legislators, we believe that our local communities and the state are best positioned to regulate critical industries such as long-term care. But the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) disregarded this, choosing instead to overreach and dictate universal regulations for staffing levels in long-term care facilities.
In short, the rules, set to go into effect in May, mandate facilities such as nursing homes to drastically increase staffing to impossible levels or face closure. This requirement, though well-intentioned on its face, amounts to nothing more than a bureaucratic attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all solution to a very diverse industry. It will assuredly have a devastating impact on our expanding elderly population.
By forcing nursing homes to meet arbitrary staffing quotas, CMS will create a situation where many facilities, especially in rural areas like much of Texas, simply will not be able to comply.
The long-term care sector is already facing a severe shortage of healthcare workers. The problem isn’t a lack of effort to hire staff by operators; it’s the lack of available staff to hire. Estimates suggest Texas would need more than 12,000 additional caregivers to meet the requirements—12,000 additional caregivers that do not exist today and will not exist in May when this mandate goes into effect.
Without a sufficient labor pool to draw from, these mandates will only result in closures, particularly in less populated regions of Texas. The end result? Fewer options for seniors and their families, longer waiting lists, and a potential collapse of our state’s long-term care industry.
For these reasons, the long-term care industry and the state of Texas are currently fighting the implementation of this staff mandate in court. There has also been considerable discussion on whether the new Trump Administration will step in, repeal this crushing mandate, and prevent the disastrous consequences from becoming a reality.
As lawmakers and individuals who love our families, we understand the desire to improve long-term care; we all want our seniors and disabled loved ones to get the best care possible. We must do so in a way that doesn’t jeopardize the entire system with a pie-in-the-sky mandate that doesn’t reflect workforce realities.
While we hope either the federal courts or the Trump Administration will end this Biden-era mandate, Texas must also look to address these workforce issues. As legislators, we are committed to providing opportunities for the next generation of healthcare workers. We must take a long-term approach to the workforce problems that plague long-term care, and that starts now.
As we focus on workforce development, CMS should focus on providing the support and oversight this industry needs to provide a safe place for vulnerable Texans, not unrealistic mandates that threaten to upend this fragile system.
Let’s keep Texas in charge of Texas, and keep Washington out of our nursing homes.
SIGNED BY:
Katrina Pierson
Texas State Representative, District 33
Wes Virdell
Texas State Representative, District 53
Mike Olcott
Texas State Representative, District 60
Andy Hopper
Texas State Representative, District 64
David Cook
Texas State Representative, District 96
John McQueeney
Texas State Representative, District 97
