JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Long-term care facilities in Florida are bracing for staffing shortages and challenges with temporary protected status for an estimated 158,000 Haitians living in Florida set to expire Monday.<\/p>\n
Kasey Wagner is an attorney specializing in nursing home abuse and neglect cases at Farah and Farah.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a critical issue,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Wagner explained in Florida, Haitians make up a significant portion of the workforce in long-term care facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, these are the people who are helping with toileting, helping with meal set up. It\u2019s all the day-to-day activities of daily living,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n In a letter sent to DHS earlier this month, the Florida Health Care Association estimated 35,000 Haitians working in the health care field in Florida alone could be impacted by the decision to end their temporary protected status.<\/p>\n \u201cThe loss of even a small percentage of these experienced caregivers would be detrimental to residents\u2019 continuity of care as well as providers who are already struggling to fill essential positions,\u201d wrote FHCA CEO Emmett Reed.<\/p>\n Wagner said given long-term care facilities already struggle to meet staffing needs, they will likely have to turn to temporary staffing agencies to fill the gaps.<\/p>\n She argued facilities that rely on temporary staff often see more problems with abuse and neglect.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they don\u2019t know the person\u2019s baseline and they\u2019re just coming in and out, in and out, in and out, they\u2019re not gonna have that intuition that something might be wrong,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n And Wagner said it\u2019s not just current residents that could be impacted, as long-term care facilities can only accept new residents if they have the necessary staff to take care of them.<\/p>\n \u201cThen you\u2019re looking at like admissions freezes and things like that, which legally they would need to do if they don\u2019t have the staff to take care of everybody in the building,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n Wagner encouraged those with family members in nursing homes or assisted living facilities to check in with their loved ones regularly to ensure they\u2019re getting the care they need.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Long-term care facilities in Florida are bracing for staffing shortages and challenges with temporary protected…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":963619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,387357,5229,146173,387358,105514,86399,387361,5412,29991,387359,3188,723,387360,8884,361894,5410,7310,3005,48908,48916,4550,425,1573,73283,266924,10427,23312,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,104443],"class_list":["post-963618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-action_newsec","tag-america","tag-burma","tag-casey_wagner","tag-cbs_news","tag-dearwood","tag-deerwood","tag-dhs","tag-ethiopia","tag-fair_and_fara","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-florida_healthcare_association","tag-haiti","tag-haitians","tag-ice","tag-jacksonville","tag-jake","tag-jake_stoan","tag-jake_stowan","tag-live","tag-local","tag-ohio","tag-somalia","tag-south_sudan","tag-springfield","tag-syria","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wagner"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/963619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}