Matching medical staff to long term care facilities to respond to COVID-19 outbreak.

Background: Staff shortage is a long-standing issue in long term care facilities (LTCFs) that worsened with the COVID-19 outbreak. Different states in the US have employed various tools to alleviate this issue in LTCFs. We describe the actions taken by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to assist LTCFs in addressing the staff shortage issue and their outcomes.

Impact of using a centralized matching process on nursing home staffing.

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of adopting a novel centralized matching process for reducing staff shortages in Massachusetts nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: This study involved several datasets and 216 Massachusetts nursing homes that used a novel online portal to enter demand for nursing staff from May 2020 to April 2021.

Results: There were significant associations between the staff-to-resident ratio and demand entries lagged by three and four weeks, and no significant associations between the staff-to-resident ratio and demand entries lagged by one and two weeks.