CMS to Post Nursing Home Ownership Affiliation Data at Nursing Home Compare

On June 28, 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it will include ownership and operatorship affiliation information on its Nursing Home Compare website. This follows the White HOuse’s announcement in February 2022 of an initiative to increase the transparency of corporate ownership and operation of nursing homes. CMS’s goal is to provide consumers with as much information about nursing homes as possible to support their healthcare decisions.

Beyond understanding affiliations when making care decisions, the new data may be useful in holding poor performing homes accountable for negligent care. In Hidden Owners, Hidden Profits, and Poor Nursing Home Care: A Case Study, the authors wrote “[m]ost large chains have diversified their holdings by purchasing other long-term care entities, and they have created complex, multiple layers of corporate ownership; created their own management companies; and placed their property into separate limited liability companies or real estate investment trusts. These new structural arrangements have been designed for tax benefits and to limit nursing home liability.” Frequently, although decision-making is at the corporate level where proft becomes more important than people, the home itself has few assets to pay its victims. Providing more data will at least give victims a starting point in knowing which rocks to turn over.

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