About Our Dashboard

Starting April 2022, New York nursing homes are required to provide an average of 3.5 hours of hands-on care per resident per day including 2.2 hours of care from nurse aides and 1.1 hours of care from a licensed practical nurse or registered nurse.  It is the first time there has been any minimum standard for staffing in New York law. This was a hard-won victory for nursing home caregivers and advocates.

​

Our dashboard uses publicly available data through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to keep track of staffing hours per day in each facility in New York.

​

Section 6106 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires facilities to electronically submit direct care staffing information (including agency and contract staff) based on payroll and other auditable data. The data, when combined with census information, can then be used to report on the level of staff in each nursing home, which can impact the quality of care delivered.

​

Methodology

​

We have mapped compliance based on the following calculations:

• Total number of days not in compliance for the quarter (census x 3.5 hours compared to total number of non-admin RN, CNA, and LPN hours; where a day is considered not in compliance if it is below the required hours by census)

• Average hours of care per resident per day for the quarter

• Average staff needed for compliance (average number of staff needed to meet 3.5 hours of minimum care, assuming 7.5 hours of care = one full time employee). This is for comparison purposes only. Facilities can meet the standard by increasing the hours worked by current staff, reducing census, or adding additional staff hours.

​

The second section of our dashboard further breaks this down by showing daily performance by staff type. These charts highlight the inconsistencies in staffing, particularly during low-staffed weekends.

• Total number of hours needed vs actuals (census x 3.5 hours compared to total number of non-admin RN, CNA, and LPN hours)

• Total number of CNA hours needed vs actuals (census x 2.2 hours compared to total number of  CNA)

• Total number of LPN/RN hours vs actuals (census x 1.1 hours compared to total number of non-admin LPN/RN hours)

• Full time staff needed for compliance (defined daily needed staff hours minus - actual staff hours / 7.5 IF >0; under the assumption that one full time staff =7.5 hours of care.

• Cumulative dashboard (sum of days of days not compliance since April 2022 according to aforementioned calculations)

• Take Action Calculator (input census x 3.5 hours / 7.5 hrs)

​

Below are the corresponding links for CMS for the source data. Please note that the dashboard currently only reflects data from Q2 (April-June) 2023 and will be updated to reflect new data once it is available via CMS.