Nursing home staff shortages are worsening problems at overwhelmed hospitals

At the 390-bed Terrace View nursing home on the east side of Buffalo, 22 beds were shut down late last month. There wasn’t enough staff to care for a full house, safely or legally.

That meant that some fully recovered patients in the adjacent Erie County Medical Center had to stay in their hospital rooms, waiting for a bed in the nursing home. Which meant that some patients in the emergency department, who should have been admitted to the hospital, remained there until a hospital bed opened up. The emergency department became stretched so thin that 10 percent to 20 percent of arrivals left without seeing a caregiver — after an average wait of six hours to eight hours, according to the hospital’s data.

Read the full article from the Washington Post here.