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Join Us Thursday for a Webinar on Using the New CMS Nursing Home Affiliation Data
On June 28, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began to publish on its Nursing Home Care Compare website information regarding a facility’s affiliation with other nursing homes under common ownership or control. In addition, CMS published a data set entitled “Nursing Home Affiliated Entity Performance Measures.” For the first time, consumers will be able to see how nursing homes in a chain or under common ownership or control perform in various quality measures, including the Care Compare Five-Star rating system, staffing levels, regulatory violations, and many other performance measures.
For nursing home residents and their families, making a decision about what facility to choose to reside in can be a daunting and frustrating process. Knowing who owns a nursing home can be a matter of life and death. For instance, research shows that residing in a nursing home owned by private-equity investment organizations raised resident mortality by 10%. However, for too long, it has been difficult to determine who actually owns a nursing home. CMS’s new affiliation data is a critical and important step in ensuring increased transparency in nursing home ownership.
This Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 1 p.m. ET, Consumer Voice will hold a webinar to demonstrate how to use this newly available information. We will provide you with step-by-step guidance on how to access and interpret ownership and performance data.
Register Now
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Update to CMS Administrator Staffing Data
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is making an update to the way they display nursing home administrator staffing data. Currently, nursing homes have their administrator turnover measure excluded if they submit Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) data suggesting an erroneously high number of administrators. Specifically, if a nursing home reports five or more administrators on 12 or more days during a three-quarter period, the administrator turnover measure is excluded. These providers' data is still included in the PBJ public use files, but it is not used in staffing measures or ratings.
As of this Friday, July 28th, CMS is updating the criteria to exclude administrator data if a nursing home reports five or more administrators on 4 or more days during one quarter. This will be applied to both the administrator turnover measure on Care Compare and the PBJ public use files. For additional details about the administrator turnover staffing measure methodology, see the Nursing Home Care Compare Five Star Technical Users' Guide (see page 3 for description of these changes).
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Resource Highlight - Loneliness and Social Isolation in Long-Term Care
 Consumer Voice and the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) have created a fact sheet outlining the consequences of loneliness and social isolation and providing tips to improve the social connectedness of long- term care residents. Twenty-five percent of Americans over 65 are considered socially isolated and forty-three percent describe themselves as feeling lonely. The problems are more severe for people in long-term care. The consequences of loneliness can manifest both medically and emotionally and can increase the risk of developing dementia by 50%. There are ways that loved ones, facilities, and the entire community can help combat isolation and loneliness in long term care.
Learn more in our fact sheet: The Value of Being Heard: Loneliness and Social Isolation in Long-Term Care. Plus, listen to the podcast episode on the same topic.
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