ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOX) - Missouri is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to how much time nursing home staff give to residents.
Federal recommendations call for roughly four hours of direct care for each nursing home resident a day. Missouri ranks 50th in the nation with an average of 3.55 hours per resident according to a summary of federal data by the Long Term Care Community Coalition.
Marjorie Moore, Executive Director of advocacy group VOYCE, looked at numbers for long-term care facilities in St. Louis City and County.
"We have some facilities in our community that are doing better than the national average and national recommendations," Moore says. "Unfortunately, we have some facilities that are doing much, much worse, and some even that are getting about two hours per resident per day. In fact, we have a bunch of them that are getting less than three hours a day. Those facilities are particularly concerning to us."
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She says staff hours at nursing homes have a direct correlation to quality of care. "If we're looking at the facilities that have more hours per day of staff care those are usually the facilities that have less complaints to CMS or to the state, usually have better survey results."
Moore tells KMOX, populations at nursing homes are down right now due to the pandemic. Her fear is that direct care hours could drop even further as some caregivers return to work and place loved ones in long-term care.
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