01/06/2022

Latest NIC Wave Survey: Workforce issues paramount

The latest NIC Survey, Wave 35, reinforces occupancy and staffing shortage trends that members have reported at the end of 2021. Compared to earlier surveys, the pace of move-ins in Independent and Assisted living has slowed, memory support move-ins are stable and nursing home admissions have increased slightly. Eighty-one percent of multi-site organizations reported significant staffing shortages; of those, 45% reported shortages on all properties, and 36% on most properties operated by the organization. In terms of biggest challenges to the organization, the top challenge for survey respondents remained consistently ‘attracting community/caregiving staff,’ at 84%. However, ‘staff turnover’ as a challenge reportedly increased between this survey and the last one; 70% of respondents in this survey as compared to 53% in the last survey. One hundred percent of respondents said that ‘overtime’ is one way they are addressing staff shortages; 77% said they were using ‘agency/temp staff’, and 20% of respondents reported using ‘agency/temp staff’ for 100% of their staff vacancies. Finally, organizations were much less optimistic about when occupancy would return to pre-pandemic levels; 36% now say it will not happen until 2023, the largest increase in this projection over NIC’s last 10 Wave surveys.