(The Center Square) – Lawmakers and special interest groups want the state to enforce existing law that requires nursing home operators to meet staffing requirements.
At a news conference Tuesday in Springfield, Illinois AARP Senior Director of Advocacy and Outreach Ryan Gruenenfelder said that in 2010, staffing standards were imposed to ensure patients’ needs were met.
"However, many nursing home operators did not live up to these standards, instead they prioritized profits over people,” said Gruenenfelder. “In 2019, AARP Illinois alongside SEIU pushed for stronger enforcement measures to hold nursing homes accountable. Despite the agreed upon legislative action, it is deeply frustrating that nursing home operators have stalled in implementing these accountability measures.”
Separately, state Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, who is an emergency room physician, said mandated staffing ratios are not the way to address shortages. Hauter suggested Illinois become a Compact Nursing State, of which there are currently 42.
"That way we can have free-flow of man-power from other states, traveling nurses, and we could expand mid-level providers and aids. We need to get faster licensing, we need to incentivize education and training, there’s all sorts of ways but imposing staffing ratios is just wrong,” said Hauter.
Hauter suggested nursing homes aren’t making a profit. He said it’s hard to retain and recruit staff.
A law signed in 2023 by Gov. J.B. Pritzker gives nursing homes until Jan. 1, 2025, to comply with the staffing requirements or they will face fines. Those requirements are based on the hours of care residents in those facilities need per day.
Wearing a SEIU brooch and chanting “SEIU” and “put the nursing home industry on notice,” state Sen. Javier Cervante, D-Chicago, said during his time as an SEIU representative, he heard many grievances about staffing shortages.
"We don’t want fines. If you don’t have a fine that means you are staffing adequately then and you’re doing the right thing, but if you’re not doing the right thing we have to hold you accountable,” said Cervante.
Hauter said staffing ratio mandates will effectively create state-run nursing homes, which can compromise efficiency.
"[Staffing ratios] is simply a union push to protect jobs and force hospitals and nursing homes to staff up nurses and it has no basis in the reality of medicine and the reality of patient care,” said Hauter. “It may be that one patient takes one-on-one nursing care and it may be that you can have three patients that are more stabilized and you can have one nurse for those three, but this, say you have to have one nurse for these two and one nurse for these two patients and it’s totally disregarding how medicine operates.”
Alzheimer’s Association Illinois Director of State Affairs David Olsen said the time is now for staffing ratios.
“These ratios have been in effect since 2010,” Olsen said during the news conference. “This agreement was made in 2019. The industry has had time to adjust.”
Hauter said that with ratios, charge nurses in the nursing homes will just put more experienced nurses with two patients and a less experienced nurse will get maybe one chronic patient, which could cause inefficiency.
“If they’re subject to some sort of fine or penalty if they drop those ratios, and I am sure the unions will be watching that really closely, you’ll have to hire more nurses. Usually it is a way for the union to say, ‘look we made this hospital hire more nurses,’” said Hauter.
The Illinois Department of Public Health would issue the fines.
