Officials failed to consider a facility’s needs when imposing the new minimum staffing standards, the judge said.
A nursing home staffing rule promulgated by health officials and promoted by the White House during President Joe Biden’s term has been struck down.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk
said in an April 7 decision that the rule illegally replaced staffing requirements outlined by Congress.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) “lacks authority to issue a regulation that replaces Congress’s preferred minimum hours with its own,” Kacsmaryk said. “That is exactly what the 24/7 Requirement does.”
The CMS rule, announced in 2024,
required nursing homes to have a registered nurse on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It also mandated that the facilities provide at least 3.48 nurse staffing hours per resident day of nursing care, a calculation reached by taking the total number of hours worked by each type of staff and dividing that number by the number of residents in the facility.
Health officials at the time
said the rule and several others were issued “to fulfill President Biden’s commitment[s],” and the White House
said at the time that the rules “deliver on the President’s promise in the State of the Union to crack down on nursing homes that endanger resident safety.”
Several groups
sued over the rule, alleging it went beyond CMS’s authority.
They pointed to laws in which Congress said a nursing home must use a registered nurse at least eight consecutive hours a day, seven days a week, and “must provide 24-hour licensed nursing services which are sufficient to meet the nursing needs of its residents.”
Kacsmaryk agreed, concluding that Congress made clear that nursing care requirements must take into account resident nursing needs, but that the rule eliminated that consideration.
The new requirements “do not consider the nursing ‘needs’ of a facility’s residents,” the judge wrote. “Instead, they mandate hours-per-resident-day ratios for all facilities. In so doing, they set a baseline staffing requirement that does not follow the statute’s terms.”
CMS did not respond to a request for comment.
The ruling was a summary judgment in favor of the groups, including the American Health Care Association.
“Today’s ruling from the Northern District of Texas is a victory for our nation’s seniors and their families,” Clif Porter, president and CEO of the organization,
said in a statement. “This unrealistic staffing mandate threatened to close nursing homes and displace vulnerable seniors.”
Sam Brooks, director of public policy at National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care,
wrote on LinkedIn that the rule would have made “the lives of hundreds of thousands of nursing home residents better.”
“Despite this ruling, we fight on to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” he said.
