The “hostage situations” for nursing homes learning at the last minute that a staffing agency has double-booked a worker are nearing an end in New Hampshire.
A new law approved last week prohibits staffing agencies from scheduling nurses or licensed nurse assistants at multiple assignments and then pushing facilities into bidding wars. The law also cracks down on other bad behavior from agencies.
“Nothing worse than, say, plugging a Friday evening shift with an agency worker and finding out Friday morning, in a sort of hostage situation, that this same worker has been double-booked, and the only way to have her show is to pay a ransom,” Brendan W. Williams, president of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “Double-booking would be illegal. Using COVID-19 as a pretext to upcharge would be illegal. Recruiting on the premises would be illegal. Placing workers with impaired licenses would be illegal.”
The new law takes effect Oct. 7. Williams said that while the sector did not get everything it was hoping for, the overall legislation that was approved has a lot of victories for nursing homes.
Agencies cannot place nurses or LNAs into facilities if their professional licenses are suspended nor can they use the presence of a “communicable virus” to increase their fees, per the legislative language. Agencies had been using referral bonuses to recruit into their workforce facility staffers, and the new law puts a halt to that practice as well.
Williams said he was disappointed that a “transparency element” to disclose what agencies charge compared to what they pay their workers was eliminated from the law through lobbying efforts from the American Staffing Association, which argued the information was proprietary.
“[That is] a somewhat laughable concern as agencies are contracting with nursing homes whose cost reports are an open book,” Williams said.
However, agencies will have to register starting Jan. 1, 2024, with the state’s Office of Professional Licensure and Certification and pay a fee, which has not yet been announced. Agencies that violate the new requirements could lose their license.
“The registration piece is important because it reveals how many of these actors are doing business in your state, and how many of those are based out-of-state,” Williams said. “That information will be useful in building on this foundation because then you’re not just trading in anecdotes.”
