24/7 labor is expensive. The goal is to have a 1:10 ratio of nurses to patients, but to get 24/7 coverage you need almost 5x as many nurses. Add other staff

24/7 labor is expensive. The goal is to have a 1:10 ratio of nurses to patients, but to get 24/7 coverage you need almost 5x as many nurses. Add other staff: food, cleaning, maintenance, executive/secretarial, etc and you have about as many non nursing staff as nursing staff. So in other words you are covering the loaded labour rate for about 1 salary per occupant.