Shortage has nursing homes on `brink of collapse'

Chippewa Manor’s beds could be full. The nursing and rehabilitation home is seeing plenty of demand from potential patients after two nearby facilities recently closed. But there’s one problem: There’s no one to care for residents.

Staffing has always been a challenge, but “it’s reached a boiling point” in the past six months, said Jill Gengler, the president of the northwest Wisconsin facility. The home has struggled to find nurses, laundry, maintenance, housekeeping and food service workers. Raising the wage for certified nursing assistants to $17 an hour from $12 has brought in some new staffers, but the pay rate is “not sustainable.”

As a result, Chippewa Manor is turning away other possible clients who might bolster revenue that would help fund higher pay.

It all spells disaster for U.S. nursing homes, an industry that was under financial pressure even before the pandemic. Declining enrollment and higher labor and supply costs have forced 327 nursing homes to shut down since 2020, and more than 400, or about 3% of certified homes in the U.S., are at risk of closing this year, according to the American Health Care Association, an industry lobbying group.

“The industry itself is on the brink of collapse,” said David Gordon, who leads the distressed health care practice at law firm

Polsinelli.

The coming upheaval also will weigh on the so-called sandwich generation, those squeezed between caring for their children and aging parents, often while juggling their own careers. More than half of adults over 65 will need care for serious disabilities, according to a government report, and the U.S. Census Bureau expects that older adults will outnumber children by 2034 for the first time ever.