Sadly, I didn’t get to the American Health Care Association convention this year. Actually, it’s been a full decade since I last personally attended one of these auspicious gatherings,
Now, lest you get the wrong idea, it’s not like any of the national long-term care organizations filed a restraining order against me, or I was thrown out for stealing handfuls of swag on a trade show floor. I simply haven’t gone, and I’m consumed with regret just thinking about it.
Even after years of absence, autumn still brings a certain sense of wistfulness for the conference experience. “For a clue to the shifting seasons, there’s no need to watch for turning leaves,” I apparently wrote years ago in McKnight’s. “The AHCA and LeadingAge conferences are the true harbingers, when hordes of LTC folks fly in perfect formation to warm trade show environments, and booth-sitting sales reps change color and fall from their hotel barstools.”
In truth, though, it’s probably best that I not show up anymore for one of these gatherings. As my column has become infinitely more popular and influential,* I would fully expect to be mobbed by loyal and admiring readers, and to become an unwelcome and counterproductive distraction from the proceedings. The resulting melee would be a lot like Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs football game, and I couldn’t in good conscience allow that to happen.
As I’ve followed this year’s event from afar, it’s clear that the proposed staffing mandate is taking up a lot of oxygen in the room, and rightly so. Long-term care leaders are determined to somehow nip it in the bud, and it’s looking like lawmakers are also taking up the cause. This coming on the heels of learning that even prisons had fewer staffing shortages during the pandemic than nursing homes did.
Maybe with all the growing pressure, those responsible for this misguided plan will finally see the light. But it’s hard to imagine any CMS administrator or president ever following Taylor Swift’s noble example and simply admitting, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem.”
*That’s a lie. It has not.
Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
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