The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 29 released a National Health Statistics Report providing estimated numbers of aides employed in adult day services centers (ADSCs) and residential care communities (RCCs), the number of hours they spend with participants or residents, and the training and benefits offered to them.

Neither category of provider is federally regulated, leaving significant variation in qualifying provider types within each subset of providers.

Adult days were more likely to employ registered nurses (RN) or licensed practical/vocational nurses (LP/VN) than RCCs with more than 51% of adult days employing an RN and 39% employing at least one LP/VN.

For RCCs less than 30% employed an RN, while little more than a third employed at least one LP/VN. Residents in RCCs generally received an average of more staff hours per resident day, though these hours were skewed by nurse aide support, whereas adult day participants received more services and time from either an RN or LP/VN.

Aides working in RCCs were typically required to complete more training and were more likely to have been trained on caring for individuals with dementia.

The paper provides a snapshot into the work-lives of staff in adult days and RCCs though falls short of providing a comprehensive picture of the participants being served by these staff or how staff hours are spent.

The brief also implies that individuals in RCCs are receiving more nursing hours per patient day than is provided in most nursing homes at 4.4 hours of care per resident day. Additionally, authors demonstrate that adult days are more likely to provide health insurance, paid time off, retirement benefits and life insurance than RCCs.

The brief would provide an interesting baseline for providers looking to benchmark their own staffing or benefits allocations, with the caveat that these data may not conform with the same data definitions used by every organization nationwide.

The full report is available here.