To this point the economic impact on nursing homes has been fairly minor. There has even been some good news about federal spending accelerating for nursing homes. But with the increasing instability in the global financial market, and businesses in every sector cutting back staff and reducing budgets, the impact on long term care will be felt sooner rather than later
This is a time for creative thinking for the nursing home industry. How can they maintain and raise quality of care for their residents and maintain a solid financial position? It’s no secret that a successful nursing home “chain” can be an extremely lucrative for-profit business in the good times. Even well managed nursing homes will be fine in hard financial times.
The nursing homes that scare me are the ones that consistently have staff and compliance issues. These are nursing homes that have high staff turnover and low staff morale. These are the nursing homes that will struggle through this hard economic time.
It’s easy for a corporation to save money by reducing staff. When you are dealing with manufacturing or retail style field staff reduction is easily done with little consequence to the consumer and corporation. But when we start to hear that staff is being reduced in the care fields it becomes scary. Just this week two companies have announced layoffs of staff citing the economy as a problem. We can’t let corporations reduce their quality of care by reducing their staff. Their commodity is people in need not sellable goods. By finding ways to make budgets without reducing staff or quality of care will be a difficult thing for managers and board members. But they have no choice! Selling assests, restructuring loans, revising their business plan are all options that should be acted upon before staff reduction.
In the coming months you will see the types of nursing homes that are managed correctly and the ones that aren’t by the headlines in the health section in the paper.