Long-Term Care Facilities Struggle as Caregivers Seek Higher Pay with Agencies

On a given day, David Ross, administrator at Hillsborough County Nursing Home in Goffstown, can be found delivering meals to residents, folding laundry and washing floors. "When a dishwasher at a nursing home can make a heck of a lot more money working for a distribution warehouse, [changing jobs is] an economically rational decision," says Brendan Williams, president and CEO of the NH Health Care Association. Agencies pay nurses and other workers, like licensed nursing assistants, up to three times what they make working directly for a health care facility, attracting highly qualified candidates. Senate Bill 149 would increase oversight in the Granite State, making it illegal for agencies to recruit staff at health care facilities or double book staff at two different health care facilities, causing them to bid for the worker.