HELLO AGAIN FROM THE OMBUDSMAN PROGRAM! As a refresher, our regional Long-Term-Care-Ombudsman Program (serving 17 counties in Ohio) is here for consumers of long-term-care supports and services to assist with complaints and issues with care quality and to advocate for the rights of long-term-care residents.
Outside of handling cases and educating providers and consumers, we also are involved with the Coalition of Organizations Protecting Elders (COPE) and their Advocacy Committee. One of the issues the committee has been working on is to identify causes and potential solutions for the long-term-care-staffing crisis.
To begin to address this issue, the COPE Advocacy Committee has done a series of data-collection activities to try to direct advocacy efforts. We continue to gather data via online surveys and held two focus groups for home-care providers and nursing-home and assisted-living-facility leadership.
Our results have confirmed much of what we already knew about the challenges faced by direct-care workers.
All of these categories impact one another and further confound the problems with staffing in longterm-care settings.
First, the role of the direct-care worker is a difficult one, often requiring long hours, physically intensive work, and emotionally draining situations. These direct-care workers often feel as if they are not recognized for their value within the long-termcare system.
Next, recruitment and retention tend to be issues due to low interest in positions in long-term-care facilities, the challenges of the work, and the lack of competitive wages and benefits.
This leads us to the reimbursement rates, which can directly impact a facility or home-care agency’s ability to offer higher wages and more benefits.
So, now that we have identified some of the contributors to the issues faced in our service area, the next step is to decide how to move forward. The data collection is ongoing and sharing of our results with agencies and community partners is a first step. However, we want the ability to begin a journey towards a solution.
The difficulty now lies in determining where we can influence change quickly. For example, is it a matter of identifying and advocating for facilities and agencies to find novel ways to recognize and retain staff? Is there a role that local organizations or governments could impact with funding or programming to shift the paradigm? Or is this an issue that we should try to impact from the top down by engaging state and national representatives and decision makers? If you have ideas or suggestions
If you have ideas or suggestions for change, please feel free to reach out to the Ombudsman Program so we can relay those ideas to the COPE Advocacy Committee. As always, we can be reached at 419-259-2891. Thank you!
Megan Benner Senecal is a member of the Ombudsman Office.
Generally, we found that the staffing challenges fall into three categories. These include the role of the direct-care worker, recruitment and retention, and reimbursement rates.
