How many facility beds must employ a full-time social worker?

• A. 100
• B. 120
• C. 140
• D. 180

Answer: (B)

The key idea is how staffing scales with facility size for social services. When a nursing facility has 120 or more beds, the workload of addressing residents’ psychosocial needs, discharge planning, family communication, and ensuring residents’ rights becomes substantial enough to warrant a full-time social worker. A full-time position ensures consistent coverage, timely response to resident and family concerns, and steady coordination of services, which helps maintain quality of life and regulatory compliance as the number of residents grows. Smaller facilities can often manage with part-time social services, since the volume of cases and complexity is typically lower. So, the threshold where a full-time social worker is required is 120 beds.