Nursing homes could be leaner by 2025
Nursing homes in Connecticut may not only look more like hospitals in five years’ time than they do today, but sites may also be more medically capable.
In 2025, it will be much more likely to see nursing home staff wearing masks, gloves and gowns to care for their long- term residents as is already the practice of nurses caring for patients discharged from the hospital, experts predict.
At the same time, more nursing homes will become capable of handling more types of acute care that requires skilled nursing.
“There’s going to be a higher level of care — not that all facilities will attain it — but there will be more intensive nursing instead of just doing recovery after cardiac surgery or a pulmonary procedure,” said Paul Liistro, CEO of Manchester Manor and Vernon Manor nursing homes, and a past chairperson of the statewide Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, and the Connecticut Center for Assisted Living.
“We’ll look more medical than residential or personal care,” Liistro said. “We are going to have a better rapid recovery response, and be able to turn on the COVID-positive buildings faster.”
A leading academic agrees.
“Even in the absence of COVID- 19, nursing homes have been diversifying into more acute care,” said Julie Robison, a professor of medicine at the UConn Center on Aging and editor- in- chief of the Journal of Applied Gerontology.
The reason? More people are choosing to receive long- term health care in their own house over one of Connecticut’s 215 nursing homes.
The trend will almost certainly result in fewer nursing home beds in Connecticut in 2025 — perhaps thousands fewer, Robison said. At last count, the state had almost 25,000 nursing home beds, 85 percent of which were occupied.
A recent report commissioned by the state predicted Connecticut would need 6,000 fewer nursing home beds by 2040.