The shortage of nursing home beds has long been known and now a new study describes in stark data the growing problem in many rural areas of Minnesota.
The Center for Rural Policy and Development released the report “The Declining Capacity of Nursing Facility Care in Rural Minnesota,” detailing the reduction in bed numbers.
The statistics are quite clear: The number of beds in rural nursing homes has declined between 30% and 100%, depending on the region, in the past 20 years. There are some rural counties that have no nursing home beds.
Many of those declines are due to facilities closing, while others were because of operators shrinking the number of beds available, often because of staffing shortages.
The situation is not quite as dire locally. Blue Earth County has 328 beds, which is down 20% since 2005. Nicollet County has 127 beds and saw just a 6% decline in bed numbers the past 20 years.
But as you move out to the next tiers of counties, the picture worsens. Le Sueur County, for example, saw a 57% decline since 2005.
Many of the nursing home closures are permanent, as facilities that close cannot easily reopen.
Northwest, southwest and north-central Minnesota are experiencing the most severe declines.
All of this is happening while demand for these beds is increasing and is expected to keep increasing until 2045.
Some of the decline in bed numbers is due to a longtime shift in consumer preference for alternatives to nursing facilities, which led to policy and financial shifts allowing home-care agencies and assisted living to take a larger portion of the elder care pie.
As the populations in rural areas continue to age, the problems will become more dire.
Fixing it won’t be easy, but raising standards and pay could help facilities get and keep more staff and make rural nursing homes more financially stable.
Legislators will need to dive deeper into creative solutions, while always keeping in mind that the different challenges faced by rural nursing homes will require different approaches.