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. In contrast, we found significant associations between the staff-to-resident ratio and the number of generated staff matches lagged by one, two and three weeks, with larger impacts overall. CONCLUSION: This study shows how adopting a centralized matching process may expedite and increase improvement in the staff-to-resident ratio in nursing homes, compared with the setup in which nursing homes need to seek nurses on their own.