A team of researchers based out of the University of Pennsylvania found that overall, nursing home staffing levels remained fairly steady throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. By looking at payroll data, this team found that although some parts of the country were hit really hard by the pandemic and saw significant job loss as a result, nursing homes across the country were largely unaffected by this on the whole.
Even with this information on record, this might not be what you experienced firsthand. The press has blamed a lot of the problems caused by COVID within the nursing home system on a habitual lack of staffing, but it really seems that this isn’t the case. To be sure, there have been significant issues within nursing homes, but these issues likely weren’t caused by a loss of staff. Rather, they were caused by poor policies, a lack of understanding of the disease, and little or no oversight when it came to keeping tabs on what was going on within nursing homes.
The team published their research in the May issue of the journal, Health Affairs.
Even if nursing homes are not losing staff, it’s important to point out that people will not get the best type of care if they are in a place that doesn’t have the right tools to meet their needs. While nursing homes can be great for some populations, they aren’t perfect for everyone. Nursing home staff have a lot on their plates, and they do a very good job at handling this, but they don’t always have the resources to give the individualized attention and care that is really going to help people on a deeper level.
The nursing home model has been significantly overused in the past. And not only this, it hasn’t been used appropriately in many circumstances. A lot of people that might not really have benefitted from a nursing home model of care have spent years living within nursing homes because they or their loved ones believed that it was the best move for them. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. The good news is that this mode of thinking has begun to change. And while COVID has done a lot of bad things to us and our society, one of the good things that has happened is that many of the shortcomings of the senior care system have been exposed to the general public. People are more likely to avoid the nursing home because of this and look for types of care that can better meet their needs.
That’s where in-home care can really help a family to flourish. An in-home caregiver typically works one on one with an individual, giving them time and energy that isn’t possible in a nursing home. What’s more, because the caregiver tends to be the same day in and day out, close relationships can more easily form than in a nursing home, allowing not just for physical needs to be met, but also social and emotional ones. There is a lot that in-home care has to offer.
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