GUEST OPINION: Colorado residents deserve better nursing homes | Opinion

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I’ve been a certified nursing assistant (CNA) in Colorado for 32 years. I care for seniors with dementia at a nursing home in Colorado Springs. I help residents with their daily needs, like brushing their teeth, eating, showering and getting dressed.

When we are properly staffed, I also do so much more. I listen to residents’ stories, comfort them, and help them live with dignity. I went into this line of work because I felt called to take care of people. But lately, this job has become impossible.

We are so understaffed that I can’t give residents the quality care they deserve. There are often only two CNAs taking care of 40 residents during a shift. This means that sometimes I can only spend six minutes with each resident. It’s terrible because it makes my job feel like a factory where I can’t give each person the individual care they deserve.

It’s also dangerous. I worry every day that a resident will fall because I wasn’t there to get them out of bed. Or that a resident will get a bed sore because I couldn’t turn them enough times.

It makes my co-workers and me feel sick. Most of us went into this line of work because we are natural caregivers who want to take good care of residents. But nursing home administrators refuse to invest in more workers and instead pressure us to treat residents without the staffing we need.

This isn’t just happening at my nursing home. There is a dangerous staffing crisis in nursing homes across Colorado and across the country. Studies show that short staffing leads to poorer outcomes for residents. But I don’t need a study to tell me that it’s wrong for an elderly resident with dementia to receive just six minutes of care every eight hours.

The primary reason for the crisis is simple: corporate greed. For-profit companies including private equity funds have acquired over 70% of America’s nursing homes. These administrators frequently slash staff to boost their profits, lowering the quality of care for residents.

They pay us workers poverty wages while enriching themselves — all at the expense of residents. In the last five years alone, the nursing home industry has paid nearly $650 million in buyouts, dividends, and salaries to executives and shareholders.

At the same time, nationally, the median hourly wage for a certified nursing assistant is $17.06. I make even less: $16 an hour, or about $33,000 per year — not nearly enough to reflect the value of this work.

Corporate greed is driving workers out of the field. Too many nursing home workers are forced to leave the industry because they can’t pay their bills. Others make the difficult choice to leave the field precisely because of the chronic short staffing issues. Short staffing begets more short staffing.

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The problem isn’t a worker shortage. It’s a good jobs shortage. We need to make nursing home jobs good jobs where workers have a voice on the job through a union to improve conditions for workers and residents alike.

The Biden-Harris administration has taken a critical first step towards making this vision a reality. This year, the administration issued the first federal minimum staffing rule, which established minimum staffing criteria for nursing facilities.

The staffing rule will save lives. Studies consistently show that the higher the staffing standard, the better the outcomes for residents. And researchers estimate the federal staffing standard would save nearly 13,000 lives per year.

The rule would also hold nursing owners accountable to the residents they serve by forcing them to invest in safe staffing.

Nursing home workers like me have pulled out all the stops to rally behind the new staffing rule and submitted over 9,000 comments supporting the new rule.

But greedy nursing home owners are fighting to roll back this rule because they don’t want any type of regulation. They’ve spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to pass legislation unwinding the rule. And Republicans in Congress — including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — are siding with the nursing home industry over seniors and workers like me.

We can’t go backwards. We need all of our legislators — including U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — to support safe staffing in nursing homes.

I urge them to vote against any attempts to roll back the federal staffing standard. That means voting “no” on any of the bills to weaken the staffing rule, including H.J. Res. 139, H.R. 7513, S.J. Res. 91 and S. 3410.

Nursing care facilities are not factories. Residents are not just numbers on a balance sheet. Nursing home residents are our parents and grandparents. Our friends and neighbors. The staffing rule will help them get the quality care that they need.

Leanne Webster is a Colorado certified nursing assistant.

Leanne Webster is a Colorado certified nursing assistant (CNA).

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