January 26, 2022 – With positive COVID-19 cases steadily climbing at nursing homes around the country, hospitals have been unable to discharge patients into skilled nursing facilities due to the lack of beds. This is a prime example of how the essential role skilled nursing facilities have played in the care continuum.
“Nursing homes, including the post-acute care parts, have just always been kind of secondary to hospitals, and I think that comes back to bite us. Because it turns out they’re a pretty essential link in the chain,” R. Tamara Konetzka, professor of public health sciences at the University of Chicago, told The Guardian.
These rising cases have caused further admission shortages because hospitals have been forced to keep patients they would have released. Harvard healthcare policy expert David Grabowski, Ph.D., told McKnights Long-Term Care News that ““Things are condition critical today. Individuals can’t find an empty or staffed bed out there. That’s a huge problem, because they’re occupying a bed that would otherwise go to a new patient.”
In the state of Washington, “176 of about 200 certified nursing facilities statewide” have been had to turn away new residents because of COVID and staffing shortages, according to Laura Hofmann, RN, Director of Clinical and Nursing Facility Regulatory for LeadingAge Washington. Hofman said, “We have close to 1,000 people in the hospitals that need to be discharged.”