New nursing home RN incentive program could help or harm senior living, groups say

• By: admin
• On: 01/10/2025 09:32:55
• In: Latest News

A newly announced incentive program aimed at attracting registered nurses to nursing homes is drawing mixed opinions from long-term care advocates on how it could affect other settings, including assisted living.

Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that it would offer nursing students up to $40,000 in tuition reimbursement and/or $10,000 outright to work for nursing homes or state survey agencies. The announcement came on the heels of CMS' December unveiling of a new nursing home staffing campaign to help skilled nursing providers and state inspection agencies recruit and educate nurses.

But Argentum said the country's long-term care workforce has a critical need for investment across all settings, not just nursing homes. The association pointed to its 2023 report and a subsequent 2024 update showing a need to recruit and retain more than 20 million workers by 2040 across all long-term care settings, including more than 3 million workers in senior living alone as well as workers in nursing homes and home healthcare and services. (Those numbers extend beyond RNs and other caregivers, with the most in-demand jobs found to be home health and personal care aides, followed by nursing assistants, food servers, cooks and housekeepers.)