WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Bob Casey, D-Pa., Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, led a letter to Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure encouraging the agency to finalize and implement the Biden Administration’s new proposed rule to address the nation’s nursing home staffing crisis. The new rule directs CMS to establish minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes, which the Senators have long called for as an important step to promote safety and quality care for nursing home residents.

The Senators wrote, “Our nation’s 1.2 million nursing home residents deserve high quality care that prioritizes their safety. The proposed rule takes a vital step towards ensuring residents receive this high quality care by establishing common sense staffing minimums and improving enforcement…We urge CMS to provide for strong enforcement of a final staffing standard while ensuring state survey agencies and their staff are adequately resourced to conduct this important work.”

Casey has spent his career fighting to improve the safety of nursing homes for their residents. In February, he called on the Biden Administration to implement minimum staffing standards in nursing homes in February 2023 and applauded the announcement of the new rule in September. Casey released a report in May 2023 detailing a crisis in nursing home oversight due to severe staffing shortages at state survey agencies. He and Wyden previously introduced the Nursing Home Improvement and Accountability Act, which would require nursing homes to meet minimum staffing standards, ensure a registered nurse is available 24 hours a day, require a full-time infection control and prevention specialist, and provide additional resources through Medicaid to support these care and staffing improvements and raise wages.