The effect of staffing on objective quality of nursing home care

Growing needs for long-term care coupled with a dwindling supply of nursing personnel is a common challenge for developed countries. To uphold care standards, many countries introduced measures to safeguard staffing levels, e.g. by introducing minimum staffing regulations for nursing homes. However, evidence on the causal relationship of nurse staffing levels and quality of care is still inconclusive. This paper adds to the sparse evidence of the effect of nursing personnel employed in nursing homes and objective quality of care and accounts for different qualification levels of nursing personnel. We find that more registered nurses lead to better quality outcomes for nursing home residents while nursing assistants do not influence our objective quality measures.