By Jennifer Brown | Colorado Sun
Nurses willing to care for medically fragile children and adults — including patients who use feeding tubes, can’t walk or speak, and rarely leave their homes — are hard to find in Colorado.
Amid a statewide nursing shortage so dire that even state mental institutions offer $14,000 signing bonuses, the lowest-paying nursing positions are going unfilled. That means many parents who have relied on “private duty nurses” for in-home care for their children and adult children are getting no help.
Colorado’s Medicaid program reimburses the agencies that employ these in-home nurses at some of the lowest rates in the nation, according to the Home Care and Hospice Association of Colorado. The rate for registered nurses in Colorado is $7.05 per hour below the national median, while the rate for licensed practical nurses is $9.04 below the median, according to the association’s analysis.