New Rules Mean More Staff For Oregon Nursing Homes

By Andrew Theen

Portland, OR  March 4, 2008 3:48 p.m.

It's not everyday that union officials, state health officials, and senior advocates team up to celebrate a cause. But that's just what happened Tuesday.

The occasion: increasing the number of assistants required in nursing homes.

New rules have now gone into effect that mandate those staffing increases across the state.  The goal is to add  500-700 certified nursing assistants by 2010.

Laura Blosser is a certified nursing assistant at Menlo Park Health Care in Northeast Portland.  She's seen positive improvements in the industry over the past five and a half years.  But Blosser says these staff increase are long overdue.

Laura Blosser: "I'm very attached to all the  people I take care of, so it's hard to cut somebody off when they are trying to tell you a story,  because you have to go help somebody go to the bathroom or you have to go do something else, but it will be much better now because there will be more people, which means you'll have more time to spend with your residents."

The staffing boost will be phased in overtime.    The state legislature already allocated $3 million to increase the ratio of staff to residents, and require facilities to make those ratios publicly available.

Bruce Goldberg, the state director of the Department Human Services says additional money to complete the implementation   will have to come from the state legislature.

State Senator Richard Devlin says Oregon is getting older and the state is doing a good job of addressing the  needs of its aging population.

Richard Devlin: "We purposefully  make a conscious effort to try to keep people out of nursing homes, to give them lower levels of care that keeps them particularly in their homes or keeps them in that are not as costly as nursing homes, and actually we have the support of the industry which is kind of unique."

Nursing assistant Laura Blosser at Menlo Park says the most important change will be increasing the size of the night shift. 

Officials with the state's department of Human Services say they believe they'll have enough qualified nursing assitants  to carry out the rule changes.

Oregon law mandates 150 hours of on the job training before a person can become a certified nursing assistant.

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