Nursing Home Statistics

Percentage of U.S. nursing homes with staffing levels too low to provide adequate care. 90%

1.4 million  —  Current number of people who are living in U.S. nursing homes,¹
20,673  —  Complaints of abuse, gross neglect, and exploitation on behalf of nursing home and “board and care” residents in 2003. ² 1 in 14  —  Number of incidents of elder abuse reported to authorities. ³

90%  —   Percentage of U.S. nursing homes with staffing levels too low to provide adequate care. ⁴
PROFIT MOTIVES AND CARE IN THE NURSING HOME INDUSTRY$75 billion  —   State and federal financing of nursing home industry in 2006. ⁵

$34 billion  —   Contribution of nursing home residents and their families in 2001. ⁶

$3.4 billion  —   Suspicious accounting transactions identified by U.S. News & World Report in 2000. ⁷ 

31%  —  Extent to which deficiencies in care in for-profit nursing homes was higher than in non-profit nursing homes in 2006. ⁸

16%  —  Drop in nurse assistants’ hours per resident day. ⁹ 

$1.2 million  —  Amount Veena Ahjua, operator of a 314-bed New York nursing home, paid herself in 2000. ¹⁰

1 million  —  2006 Salary of Genesis HealthCare Corporation CEO, George V. Hager, Jr. ¹¹

$23,193  —  Median annual salary of a Certified Nurse Assistant 2008. ¹²

4.55  —  Recommended minimum hours of direct nursing care per resident per day. ¹³

3.7  —  Actual hours of direct nursing care per resident per day. ¹⁴

Sources

1. National Center for Health Statistics  Health, United States, 2007, Table 117
2. National Center on Elder Abuse http://www.ncea.aoa.gov/ncearoot/Main_Site/pdf/publication/FinalStatistics050331.pdf
3. Karl Pillemer and David Finkelhor (1988), The Prevalence of Elder Abuse: A Random Sample Survey, The Gerontologist, 28: 51-57.
4. Correspondence from Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Henry Waxman to Mr. Thomas Scully, http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20040830113115-11866.pdf (visited Feb. 3, 2005); citing U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Appropriateness of Minimum Nurse Staffing Ratios in Nursing Homes, 2001.
5. “At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing” Charles Duhigg, New York Times, September 23, 2007.
6. Id
7. Id. In the article, a former fraud investigator said, “You never have anything show up as profit… They show these really skinny operating margins, so they can always plead poverty.”
8. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Nursing Home Data Compendium 2007
9. Christopher H. Schmitt, The New Math of Old Age, U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 30, 2002. quoting University of California researcher Charlene Harrington.
10. Id
11. Genesis HealthCare Proxy Statement http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1236736/000110465907017133/a07-4061_1defm14a.htm
12. Salarywizard.com  Certified Nursing Assistant – Nursing Home 2008 data http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/                                                                                            swzl_compresult_national_HC07000412.html
13. Charlene Harrington et al., Nursing Facilities, Staffing, Residents, and Facility Deficiencies, 1998 Through 2004, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, August, 2005, http://www.pascenter.org/documents/OSCAR2005.pdf (visited Sept. 21, 2006).
14. Id.