The State of Texas has filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over their ruling that sets minimum staffing levels in nursing homes as part of the latest legal oppositions against a mandate that is widely unpopular.
The lawsuit, which was filed earlier this month in a Texas district court, Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the judge to vacate the regulation and argued that Medicare had overstepped its authority by their setting staffing levels without a specific directive from Congress.
“The new requirements remove the historic flexibility of a nursing home to determine what is ‘sufficient to meet the nursing needs of its residents,’” the complaint says (h/t Healthcare Dive). “Instead, the CMS Final Rule now imposes a one-size-fits-all rule that directly contravenes Congress’s stated flexible directive with rigid, inflexible requirements.”
The mandate requires that all nursing homes receiving federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid to have a registered nurse onsite for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, the homes provide at least 3.48 hours of care per resident each day and at least 0.55 hours of that care must be provided by registered nurses.
“This power grab by [President] Biden’s health bureaucrats could put much-needed care facilities out of business in some of the most underserved areas of our state,” Paxton said in an official statement. “We are taking the federal government to court over this rule that could worsen rural care shortages by shutting down facilities due to new hiring quotas that are impossible to fill.”
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is overseeing the suit.
