A Push To Improve America's Nursing Homes
Earlier this month, the Biden administration proposed new staffing standards for nursing homes to help improve conditions for the 1.3 million Americans living in facilities across the country. Advocates have pushed for this change for decades, but the pandemic highlighted just how critical the situation has become. More than 200,000 nursing home residents and workers died, or about one-fifth of the country’s overall Covid-19 deaths. And by all accounts, overall care plummeted. “This could be a game changer,” says David Grabowski, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. His research examines the economics of aging, with a particular interest in the areas of long-term and post-acute care. He joins Diane to talk about what this new proposal might mean for quality of care – and why it might not go far enough.