California considers another delay to nursing home requirement

KFF Health News reported on California considering the suspension of a requirement that nursing homes have a 96-hour backup power supply. The industry claims that compliance will require over $1 billion in capital investments, and a two-year extension was granted last year. Tangentially, the article also notes that "a federal judge in Texas blocked a Biden administration rule to increase staffing at nursing homes, even though research has found low staffing to be at the root of many of the quality issues across such facilities."

Nursing homes are somewhat known to struggle to stay open, although one professor mentioned in the article believes that nursing home owners are "good at hiding their profits." Assuming that nursing homes do generally struggle financially, the attempts to require backup power and higher staffing levels raise an interesting question of who should pay. No one seems to argue that both measures would result in better care, but obviously there is a question of whether the additional benefit is worth the cost. Many nursing homes probably receive a fixed amount per Medicaid patient, and as long as their beds are full, have little financial incentive to improve their service. Perhaps one way of addressing this challenge would be for Medicaid to offer a higher level of reimbursement for higher levels of care (whether that be longer power backup or higher staffing levels).