More than one-third of nursing homes in the U.S. had no medical director presence in the first quarter of 2023, according to a study published Sept. 2 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco, the California Association Long Term Care Medicine in Santa Clarita and the Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York City analyzed federal nursing home staffing and payroll data from 2017 to 2023.
In the first quarter of 2023, 36.1% of nursing homes reported no medical director presence, according to the study.
Between 2017 and 2023, when a medical director was present, their time amounted to an average of 36 minutes per day, or 4.2 hours per week. For-profit nursing homes had the lowest rate of medical director presence at 61.4%, compared to nonprofit and government run facilities, at 71.3% and 66.5%, respectively.