The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on June 28, 2023, that its Nursing Home Care Compare website will now include ownership and operatorship affiliation information. CMS also announced that it will publish combined inspection, staffing, quality, and other performance metrics across groups of nursing homes with shared ownership and operatorship on data.cms.gov.
On February 28, 2022, the White House released the FACT SHEET: Protecting Seniors by Improving Safety and Quality of Care in the Nation’s Nursing Homes, which announced an initiative to increase the transparency of corporate ownership and operation of nursing homes.
On September 26, 2022, CMS began publishing Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) ownership data on data.cms.gov. As part of this release, CMS identified groups of Medicare-certified nursing homes linked together by common owners and operators, referred to as affiliated entities, which were included in the dataset. As part of the next phase of this initiative, CMS will now make this affiliated entity information available on the Nursing Home Care Compare website in order to increase the transparency of nursing homes’ ownership and operatorship for consumers, allowing them to make more informed decisions about their care.
CMS will also publish the Nursing Home Affiliated Entity Performance Measures dataset on data.cms.com. These data combine inspection, staffing, quality, and other performance metrics across affiliated entities.
By taking these steps, CMS said it will fulfill the White House Fact Sheet goal to “track and identify owners and operators across states to highlight previous problems with promoting resident health and safety.”
Compliance Perspective
Issue
High quality and safe resident care should be the top priority when providing nursing home services. All staff should be well trained and knowledgeable in the policies and procedures that ensure implementation of high quality, safe care. Failure to meet standards for quality of care can result in poor outcomes for residents, citations for substandard quality of care, and fines and other sanctions.
Discussion Points
- Review your policies, procedures, and staffing guidelines to ensure they are designed to result in provision of quality care for all. Review your Facility Assessment as required by F838 to ensure it addresses the needs of all residents. Update your policies and Facility Assessment as necessary.
- Train staff on their responsibility to provide safe, high quality nursing care or to provide support services that help meet resident needs. Document that these trainings occurred and file the signed document in each employee’s education file.
- Periodically audit to ensure staff are following policies for delivering safe, quality nursing care and support services. Ensure your Facility Assessment is current, thoroughly assesses the needs of all residents, and determines the resources required to provide high quality resident care and services. Review your QAPI initiatives to ensure that safe, quality care is monitored as an initiative of the QAA/QAPI committee.
*This news alert has been prepared by Med-Net Concepts, LLC for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal advice.*
