Just as experts predicted, occupancy rates for nursing facilities declined between the first and second quarters of 2017.
Nursing care facilities were 86.5% full in the second quarter, according to the most recent figures from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC). That’s down from the 87.2% first-quarter figure presented in the NIC MAP Market Fundamentals report.
The decline corresponds with more in-depth data that NIC reported last month, showing that SNF occupancy — despite increasing from the fourth quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017 — was on a downward swing in March. Those figures, presented in the quarterly Skilled Nursing Data Report, were enough for the Annapolis, Md.-based research and analytics group to predict that occupancy figures could fall to new lows before the end of 2017.
Still, it’s important to note that the two reports don’t necessarily align. The MAP data provides a different snapshot from NIC’s more exhaustive Skilled Nursing Data Reports, tracking “majority nursing care for all community types and primary markets only,” NIC senior principal Bill Kauffman told Skilled Nursing News in an e-mail. “Our skilled nursing data report includes mostly freestanding only skilled nursing properties.”
NIC’s Skilled Nursing Data Report also presents information from about 1,500 properties across the country, some of which fall outside the scope of NIC MAP data, Kauffman said, adding that there are differences in locations and types of properties included in the two types of reports.
The most recent set of MAP data showed that total nursing inventory grew by 0.1% during the second quarter of 2017, while private-pay rents rose 2.6% from the same quarter in 2016.
Written by Alex Spanko
