The impact of sending nursing staff home who are mildly ill with COVID-19 has been a topic of discussion in the healthcare industry. A recent study published in JAMA Network Open highlighted the potential negative consequences of this practice. According to the study, sending home nursing staff who test positive for COVID-19 could exacerbate existing understaffing issues in nursing homes, leading to more missed resident care tasks, hospitalizations, deaths, and increased costs.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research (PHICOR) at CUNY SPH, the Center for Transformative Geriatric Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, and the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, Irvine, utilized computer simulation modeling to assess the impact of current staffing levels on resident outcomes and costs in nursing homes.
The findings of the study revealed that many nursing homes are currently understaffed, with a significant number of resident care tasks going uncompleted. This understaffing has resulted in missed care tasks, resident hospitalizations, deaths, and substantial costs to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Sending nursing staff home due to COVID-19 further exacerbated the understaffing issue, leading to even more missed tasks, hospitalizations, deaths, and additional costs.
The study suggested that an alternative approach to sending staff home could be allowing mildly ill staff to continue working while wearing N95 respirators. This approach was shown to reduce missed workdays, increase completed tasks, decrease missed-task-related hospitalizations and deaths, and save on costs. However, it is important to note that employees should not be encouraged to work while sick and contagious, and efforts should be made to address the underlying problem of understaffing in nursing homes.
In conclusion, the study emphasized the need to find solutions to the underlying issue of understaffing in nursing homes, such as offering competitive wages and ensuring adequate staffing levels to provide quality care to residents. By addressing these challenges, nursing homes can improve resident outcomes, reduce unnecessary harm, and mitigate the negative impact of sending nursing staff home due to COVID-19.
