The pandemic pummeled long-term care - it may not recover quickly, experts warn
Nursing homes and other long term care facilities have lost a record number of residents and staff to COVID-19 – representing about a quarter of all COVID deaths in this country.
Now, the industry is suffering through a historic staffing shortage, further exacerbated by omicron. Workers have quit in record numbers since the pandemic started. And during the worst of omicron many frontline staff had to stay home because of breakthrough infections.
"Quite frankly, it's been pretty brutal here," says Nathan Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society, a large non-profit provider of long-term care in the country, with facilities in 23 states. From Washington to Florida and from Maine to California, facilities and staff are struggling.
Of Good Samaritan's 15,000 staff, several hundred tested positive for COVID-19 during the worst part of the surge, Schema says, putting them into contingency staffing across the organization. "In some of our more rural communities, it doesn't take, but, one or two nurses to be out with COVID to really create a tough situation."
Absences and staffing shortages leave those still showing up for work carrying the burden.
"You can see it in people's eyes – the tiredness, the exhaustion," says Jenna Szymanski, a nurse at the Good Samaritan Society's Luther Manor in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. "All the staff, I think, are pretty burnt out right now."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/22/1081901906/the-pandemic-pummeled-long-term-care-it-may-not-recover-quickly-experts-warn
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Reminding you that understaffing and crappy pay in these places DID NOT start with Covid!
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