(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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Rule for round-the-clock nurses at nursing homes delayed a decade by ‘big, beautiful bill’ • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-07
The massive tax and spending bill signed into law last week by President Trump put a 10-year delay on a proposed staffing rule South Dakota health care groups said would close nursing homes.
The rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would’ve required nursing homes to keep a nurse on site 24/7, starting in 2026 for urban areas and in 2027 for rural ones. Each resident would’ve been entitled to about three and a half hours of daily care from nurses, nursing aides and other staff.
Most nursing homes in South Dakota don’t hit that mark.
Just 5% met the proposed daily staffing requirements as of last year, one lobbyist told the Legislature’s budget-setting committee in November. Another called the new staffing expectations “impossible” in parts of rural South Dakota that already rely on expensive contract nurses, and said up to 600 residents would risk displacement from home closures if the rule took effect.
“We’d have been looking at somehow finding over 299 additional staff, and about $19 million to do it,” Mark Deak, who leads the South Dakota Health Care Association, told South Dakota Searchlight this week. “One, where do you find 300 additional staff? And two, if you could, where do you get the money to do it?”
Deak praised the 10-year delay, which, he said, “in the congressional world, is essentially a repeal.”
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, noted the rule’s delay in an email listing the “wins” for his state in the “big, beautiful bill.”
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley was among the attorneys general to sign on to a multistate lawsuit over the rule that was filed last year against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The South Dakota Association of Health Care Organizations also signed on to that lawsuit, which was closed in the Northern District of Iowa last month after a judge ruled in favor of the opponents on the 24/7 nurse and staffing rules.
Tim Rave, head of the association of health care organizations, said last week that the rule’s delay was expected after Trump’s election last fall, but welcome.
“It was maybe well intentioned, but it was not well thought out,” Rave said.
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[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/briefs/rule-for-round-the-clock-nurses-at-nursing-homes-delayed-a-decade-by-big-beautiful-bill/
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