BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — For many nursing homes in Minnesota, there are enough rooms for new residents but there aren't enough employees.
Dan Strittmater, vice president of operations at Monarch Healthcare Management, says the worker shortage results in turning would-be residents away from the long-term care services they offer.
"It can make it difficult to admit new residents," he said.
Strittmater says Monarch facilities would benefit from hundreds of new hires.
"If you went with nursing, you could hire let's say 10 positions at each facility and if we said for 31 facilities that's like 310 positions," he said. "Then I would say at least like three in culinary or housekeeping as well per facility. I think that would be a good start."
Patti Cullen, president and CEO of Care Providers of Minnesota calls the nursing home worker shortage a crisis. She says there have long been issues over matters like low wages and says the pandemic has made the crisis worse.
"We've had people that have been working with full PPE in this 90 degree heat for a long time, right, and they're burnt out," Cullen said. "So I'm seeing people leave."
She's concerned even more employees will leave their jobs now that President Joe Biden has announced nursing homes will need to require their employees to get vaccinated or risk loss of federal funding.
"I'm a big fan of being vaccinated," Cullen said. "The con is ... not all healthcare settings are requiring that folks be vaccinated."
Cullen says nursing home workers who refuse to get vaccinated will likely leave their jobs to work for healthcare settings that don't require vaccination. She believes a universal mandate for all healthcare settings would be best as no one sector would be left with fewer employees.
"We're still going to have the workforce crisis and we'll still have to figure out how to address it but at least we won't have people flooding from one sector going to the other," she said.
AARP Minnesota is taking a different stance. Mary Jo George, associate state director of advocacy, says AARP applauds the requirement because "the loss of lives of both residents and staff have been devastating."
Strittmater says he can see both sides of the issue.
"Providers like us, and the staff and the residents, we want to feel heard by the politicians," he said. "That was once of the concerns was, was it a well-informed decision?"