Lawmakers, families say some CT nursing homes are understaffed. Data may not be reliable

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, July 7, 2026
By Livi Stanford

Rep. Jane Garibay, a Windsor Democrat and co-chair of the Aging Committee, has often heard from family members that their loved ones in are not receiving the care they need in nursing home facilities.

“People are not being fed on time,” she said. “They’re not being given their meds on time. There are people that are not taken out of their beds all day. They don’t make sure they’ve eaten. That is usually associated with not proper staffing.”

For example, she said that long-term care facilities are supposed to have community activities that residents are engaged in.

“And I have found personally in nursing homes that I have gone into that it is not happening,” she said.

In Connecticut, nursing homes are required by law to provide a minimum of 3.0 hours of direct care per resident per day. The staffing level requirement is below other states.

Mairead Painter, State Long Term Care Ombudsman, said “the federal recommendation for basic needs for nursing homes residents is 4.1 hours of direct care per resident per day, and I would say that at least 75% of the nursing homes in Connecticut are not staffing at that.”

Lawmakers and nursing home resident advocates have named private equity ownership, which has brought concerns about firms stripping equity and cutting costs to the detriment of the company and its customers, as a potential factor in staffing issues.

Lawmakers said they are investigating the percentage of nursing homes in the state that are owned by private equity. They said they are hopeful that new legislation requiring private equity firms that own nursing homes to provide the state with thorough financial details will aid in those efforts.

Matt Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities and Connecticut Center for Assisted Living, “acknowledged that Connecticut’s 3.0 minimum staffing level requirement is below other states but noted the data shows Connecticut nursing homes are considerably exceeding those levels.”

He said Connecticut nursing homes are on par with the national average.

Barrett said “state DPH regulators rarely find nursing homes providing staffing below state minimums because they are overwhelmingly in compliance with these requirements.”

He said that “the adequacy and quality of nursing home staffing is a major concern and that his nursing home members are concerned that there will not be sufficient staffing to meet the growing demand for skilled nursing care on the immediate horizon.

“Nursing home staffing shortages now are a main reason some nursing homes are not able to accept new admissions from hospitals,” he said.

Sam Brooks, director of public policy for the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, a national nonprofit that advocates on behalf of consumers of long-term care settings, said “when facilities are understaffed, the staff there are overburdened.

“The quality of care they can provide is degraded because they have to provide so much to so many people,” he said. “So it’s really the unfortunate factor that drives bad outcomes. It’s everywhere in the United States. As advocates we fought hard for a staffing standard and it was rescinded under the Trump administration.”

Brooks said staff turnover is also high in nursing home facilities; on average in Connecticut a nursing home will have to replace a third of its staff every year, according to CMS data.

Garibay described the industry as a hard place to work.

“It’s hard to get people to work in areas where those that are employed are telling me that they’re short staffed,” she said. “So that means that they can’t take care of people the way they were trained to and want to.”

Sen. Jan Hochadel, a Meriden Democrat and co-chair of the Aging Committee, said “when facilities are understaffed, it’s the patients and their families who suffer most.

“The people working in these nursing homes are doing the best they can, but when a single aide is stretched across too many residents, there isn’t enough time to give each person the attention they need,” she said. “Staff can miss small changes that matter, a shift in behavior, a sign that something’s wrong, because they’re moving too fast to catch it. At that age, missing something isn’t a small mistake. Things can go sideways quickly, and it really can be the difference between life and death. Our loved ones deserve better than that.”

Painter said inadequate staffing can impact the number of falls residents experience, wound care concerns, and people getting to the bathroom.
Feeling unseen

Mary Grace Cavallo, a former Waterbury Board of Aldermen member, said she raised concerns for several years concerning the care her father, August Cavallo, received at two nursing homes in the state. She said staffing was certainly an issue.

She said she filed a complaint with the Department of Public Health in April 2025 and still has not heard the result of that complaint.

Her father passed away in the facility in April of this year at the age of 93.

“It seems like once you have a loved one in a facility it seems like they go downhill,” she said. Her father suffered from dehydration and was often left alone, she said.

“The residents were left alone. My father would be thrown in his room and they wouldn’t even do any activities with him,” she said. “He was always mad because he was always pushed in his room.”

She said she would come in every day to shampoo her father’s hair and shave him, because the staff would not attend to do that.

“I was shaving him every day,” she said. “Giving him a little dignity. I trimmed his fingernails.”

Paola Costantini, who serves as a power of attorney for her friend Francis, in a different nursing home in the state, shared similar concern.

Costantini who worked in the ’90’s as a CNA described “filthy” conditions in the nursing home of her friend. She said the tables are not often cleaned up and the rooms are dirty.

“They need more staffing,” she said. “They need to treat the patients with a little more compassion.”
‘CMS’s processes were not effective in ensuring accuracy of staffing’

Under the Affordable Care Act, the Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) was created, “requiring facilities to electronically submit direct care staffing information based on payroll and other auditable data,” according to CMS.

The American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living describe the Payroll-Based Journal as a “method to collect auditable and verifiable staffing data from nursing facilities.”

The Center for Medicare Advocacy reported that “The HHS Office of Inspector General now reports that in March 2024, nearly half of all nursing homes in a 100-facility sample misreported RN hours on PBJ.”

The Inspector General report said the findings “may be indicative of systemic issues across the nursing home industry that should be addressed to better ensure the accuracy of nursing home star ratings.”

“CMS did not ensure that nursing homes took corrective actions to address findings identified in the nursing homes’ prior PBJ audits,” the report said further.

CMS concurred with the results of the Inspector General’s findings when “considering whether the sampled nursing homes need further PBJ audits,” according to the report.

Access this article at its original source.