Staffing in SNF has been an ongoing conversation. Staffing impacts the provision of care to existing SNF residents, admissions, and the provision of services and goods to those entities servicing SNF’s. CNA’s (Certified Nursing Aides) play an important role in SNF’s, specific to direct health care needs such as bathing, turning, or moving patients, gathering medical supplies, and other care for residents.
To better visualize what is going on, I looked at the weekly CNA hours per resident across all states from January 2020 through July 2021. Normalizing the data to per resident hours, allows us to adjust for decreased occupancy – thus allowing comparison over time within states, and between states. The baseline is the average per resident CNA weekly hours for 2019.
Here are a couple of takeaways:
- The most significant decline(s) generally occurred during or shortly after the second COVID wave in and around January 2021
- In some states, CNA weekly hours per resident actually increased during and shortly after the first COVID wave in and around March 2020
