AARP New York Applauds Implementation of Nursing Home Staffing and Spending Requirements, Urges Additional Improvements

2021 minimum staffing and direct care spending laws had been suspended by executive order during pandemic

AARP New York today praised Governor Kathy Hochul for lifting her suspension of 2021 laws requiring minimum staffing and direct care requirements in nursing homes.

The laws are an important first step toward improving care for and protecting the dignity and safety of nursing home residents.

New York’s nursing home residents and families deserve to know that any licensed facility they go to will have safe staffing. New York taxpayers have the right to expect that they will get value for the billions of dollars they invest in nursing home care.

“We’re pleased that Governor Hochul is moving ahead with implementation of these groundbreaking laws, which create minimum nursing home staffing ratios and direct care spending minimums for the first time,” said AARP New York State Director Beth Finkel. “While we support this move, AARP will continue fighting to improve these laws.”

The 2021 laws for the first time create minimum nursing home staffing ratios, set a 70 percent floor for direct resident care spending and require spending a minimum of 40 percent of revenue on resident-facing staffing.

AARP New York supports strengthening the laws by:

• Requiring nursing facilities to have at least one registered nurse (RN) provide .75 hours of care per resident per day—recognizing that increased RN staffing hours correlate to better quality outcomes.
• Requiring an RN in the building 24/7.
• Including a requirement to maintain all nursing staff at 4.1 hours per day per resident. This is the threshold identified by an important federal study as necessary just to provide for the basic clinical needs of nursing home residents.
• Including clear enforcement guidelines with penalties for facilities not complying with nursing home staffing levels.
• Increasing the 70% direct care spending requirement to 90%.

In additional to strengthening staffing and spending requirements, AARP continues to press the governor and legislators to increase funding for New York's Long Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) by $15 million in the final state budget.

Finkel added: “LTCOP can play a significant role in ensuring quality care is provided by long-term care facilities and every resident is treated with the dignity that they deserve, but it is woefully underfunded. Just eight percent of New York State’s 1,400 long term care facilities received a weekly visit from an ombudsman during the final three months of 2021, and 62.7 percent were not visited by a long-term care ombudsman at all during that time.”

MEDIA CONTACT: Jordan McNerney, jmcnerney [at] aarp [dot] org.