Nurses for Medically Fragile Kids are Underpaid and Hard to Find. Parents Want the State to Step In.

The Colorado Sun | By Jennifer Brown

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. 

This puts Colorado in the bottom third of states and it’s why parents of children with extreme health issues are asking lawmakers for a $15 million boost in state funding. The money would raise Medicaid rates that pay nurses’ salaries...

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