Staffing of Qualified Social Workers and Nursing Home Quality of Care.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Nursing homes provide 24-hour care for more than 1.2 million US residents with complex medical and psychosocial needs. Social workers play a role in supporting person-centered care, yet many facilities lack adequate social worker coverage, and evidence associating qualified social worker staffing with quality outcomes remains limited.

Objective

To examine the association between staffing of qualified social workers and nursing home quality outcomes, with attention to facilities serving residents with Alzheimer disease and related dementias.

Design, setting, and participants

This facility-level cohort study used a synthetic difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption to analyze 2491 US nursing homes from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2021, co

SUBMITTER: Chen Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12936878 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature