Certified nursing assistants leave nursing homes at about 42% a year. Replacing one costs $3,000–$6,000 — but that line item is the smallest cost turnover creates. The larger ones — overtime, premium coverage, survey risk, and lost continuity of care — never hit the invoice, and they’re the ones that compound.
You already budget for the rehire. This field guide is about the three costs you haven’t budgeted for — the ones quietly setting your census, your star rating, and tomorrow’s round of call-outs.
What’s inside
- The four costs of a single departure — and why only the first one shows up as a number you can point to.
- The math for your building — a worked example you can run on your own headcount and turnover.
- Why you can’t out-hire turnover — and the one lever that actually changes the math.
- A 60-second continuity check — five questions that tell you whether you’re already paying the continuity tax.
- Every number, sourced — HCS, BLS, Relias, and payroll-based (PBJ) data, cited.
Rather skip the arithmetic? Run your building’s real number — your headcount, your turnover, your backfill mix — in the CNA Turnover Cost Calculator.
Turnover will always cost you the rehire. What you don’t have to accept is the compounding — the overtime, the survey drag, and the continuity tax that resets care every time a familiar face walks out. Survey Safe with Switch.