On August 17th, LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan sent a letter to President Biden urging him to convene a roundtable of stakeholders to address the aging services workforce crisis instead of relying solely on an unrealistic staffing mandate. She also requested a meeting with the President to further discuss the issue. Sloan emphasized in the letter that “…nursing homes [should] not be expected to shoulder the entire burden” of a national labor shortage and underscored the need for real solutions to increase potential employees and improve job quality. “It is critical that we make investments in our health care workforce, now and into the future, by building domestic and international pipelines of well-trained, professional caregivers,” she wrote, adding that the President is “uniquely positioned to convene stakeholders to develop a collaborative and coordinated strategy to solve the nursing home staffing crisis.” Additional resources: LeadingAge’s public statement on the letter and A rundown of LeadingAge’s advocacy efforts.
