About Nursing Home Staffing
The following types of staff are included in the nursing home staffing information that is collected by CMS:
- Registered Nurse (RN)
- Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)
- Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN)
- Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)
Each nursing home reports its staffing hours to its state survey agency. These staffing hours are from a two-week period just before the state inspection. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) gets nursing home staffing data from the states.
CMS converts the staffing hours reported by the nursing home into a measure that shows the number of staff hours per resident per day. The staffing hours per resident per day are reported by type of staff, and all staff combined as a total.
Staffing hours per resident per day is the average amount of hours worked divided by the total number of residents. It doesn't necessarily show the number of nursing staff present at any given time, or reflect the amount of care given to any one resident.
View information about staffing roles and qualifications
Why is this measure important?
Federal law requires all nursing homes to provide enough staff to adequately care for residents. However, there is no current federal standard for the best nursing home staffing levels. The nursing home must have at least one RN for at least 8 straight hours a day, 7 days a week, and either an RN or LPN/LVN on duty 24 hours per day. Certain states may have additional staffing requirements. CNAs provide care to nursing home residents twenty four hours per day, seven days a week.
Some nursing homes might require more nursing staff due to the conditions of their residents, and other factors such as whether the nursing home has special care units. Please refer to the Nursing Home Checklist for questions or observations about this measure that can help you evaluate the nursing homes you visit. You should also look at the State Inspection Results, particularly any Quality of Life or Quality of Care deficiencies.
An Important Caution: These staffing numbers are based on information reported by the nursing home. They represent staffing levels for a two-week period prior to the time of the state inspection. CMS checks the data for unusual reporting issues, like obvious data entry error, and asks states to follow up with nursing homes in those cases. However, currently there is no system to fully verify the accuracy of the staffing data that nursing homes report. Because of this limitation and because staffing levels may have changes since the last inspection, you should be cautious when interpreting the data.
