Nursing Homes: 10 Worst States for Nurse Staffing

Kentucky, like  a number of other states, do not have mandatory minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes (if you want to do something about it, contact Bernie at Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform).  
So, I was honestly surprised when Kentucky didn’t make the top ten list of worst states for nursing home staffing (but I bet they were number 11).  That being said, here is the list as published by U.S News and World Report.

Nursing Homes: 10 Worst States for Nurse Staffing

How many hours a day are home residents under the direct care of a registered nurse?

By Avery Comarow , Megan Johnson
Posted December 19, 2008

Yesterday, the federal government rolled out a revamped and simplified approach to its evaluations of nursing homes, in order to make the onerous task of choosing the right one easier for families. Like the system the government uses for rating Medicare health and drug plans, the Nursing Home Compare site
now gives nursing homes from 1 to 5 stars, overall and in each of three areas—performance in the latest three quarterly reports in 10 key quality measures, such as the percentage of residents with urinary tract infections; performance in the latest three annual health inspections; and adequacy of both overall staffing and staffing by registered nurses.

The following 10 states have the highest percentages of nursing homes with the worst rating of 1 star for adequate staffing by registered nurses.