Families of nursing home residents have spent the past year appealing to policymakers that COVID-19 lockdowns were having a significantly negative effect on their loved ones’ health — and a new study put some sobering numbers on the physical impact of loneliness. The proportion of residents experiencing unexpected weight loss accelerated by 150% during the […]
Category: Compliance
PruittHealth last week announced that all 91 of its skilled nursing facilities in the Southeast region will be required to undergo Joint Commission Nursing Care Center Accreditation, with the facilities in Georgia slated to go first. The SNFs will be required to undergo accreditation to achieve the Gold Seal of Approval; accreditation from the Joint […]
The federal government last week ended a year-long nightmare for families across the country when it announced the relaxation of visitation bans at nursing homes in all but a few limited cases. But for the family members who spent 2020 working to reunite with their loved ones, the work won’t end along with the expiration […]
The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed California attorney general Xavier Becerra as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by a 50-49 margin, almost entirely along party lines. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican who voted to confirm Becerra. Becerra was nominated by President Joe Biden in early December […]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren this week wrote another letter to executives at Genesis HealthCare (NYSE: GEN), raising concerns about the nursing home giant’s recent deal to significantly restructure its operations in part through a $50 million private equity investment. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, made headlines in late January when she publicly questioned the operator’s decision to […]
The passage of the Social Security Act in 1935 was a landmark moment in the history of aging in America, but it also created a novel problem for the federal government: how to keep track of payroll information for the millions of workers who would now be paying into the new retirement insurance program, and […]
The state of California on Monday filed a lawsuit against Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD), accusing the company of submitting false nursing home staffing data to the federal government and improperly handling resident discharges. California attorney general Xavier Becerra — President Biden’s pick to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services […]
The federal government’s sole attempt at linking nursing home Medicare reimbursements with outcomes is broken and requires an overhaul, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) determined. The Skilled Nursing Facility Value-Based Payment (SNF VBP) Model has rewarded strikingly few facilities while the majority have lost money — though the amounts involved in either direction were […]
The federal government on Wednesday issued updated guidance for nursing home visitations, calling on facilities to allow “responsible indoor visitation at all times and for all residents” — regardless of vaccination status — with a handful of situational exceptions. “CMS recognizes the psychological, emotional, and physical toll that prolonged isolation and separation from family have […]
Therapist staffing coverage at nursing homes fell up to 10% after the October 2019 implementation of a new Medicare payment model, a new study has determined — with the cuts coming primarily on the backs of contracted employees and not full-time skilled nursing facility staffers. Physical and occupational therapist staffing was 6% lower in the […]
As nursing home deaths in New York remain national news, reform efforts in the state are increasingly focusing on for-profit providers, and one proposal would specifically ban their expansion in the Empire State. For-profit nursing home operators would be prohibited from establishing new facilities or expanding their existing ones under a proposal sponsored by Manhattan […]
Skilled nursing facilities were given clear vaccine opportunities through the federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care program, which provided three on-site clinics at facilities across the country — with the goal of providing the two-dose inoculations to as many residents and staff as possible. Now that the third vaccination clinics are wrapping up in most […]
Two of the largest trade associations for nursing homes announced a goal of vaccinating approximately 75% of the roughly 1.5 million nursing home workers across the U.S. by the end of June. The American Health Care Association (AHCA), which represents more than 14,000 primarily for-profit nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and LeadingAge, which represents […]
After a year of remarkable tragedy in nursing homes, a new analysis of federal COVID-19 data shows a significant drop in resident deaths in the weeks after vaccine clinics began — a trend made even more striking given the simultaneous spike in U.S. coronavirus deaths over the same span. Weekly deaths in nursing homes fell […]
The vaccine rollout at nursing homes and other congregational care settings has brought rapid and substantial declines in COVID-19 case numbers, but leaders at a top landlord in the sector say the desperately welcome trend has yet to have an impact on persistently low occupancy. “Fortunately, the rollout of the vaccine to over 94% of […]
Private equity ownership of nursing homes has resulted in a variety of negative outcomes, including an elevated risk of death for short-term Medicare patients, higher rates of antipsychotic drug use, and increased taxpayer spending on episodes of care, a new study concluded. Published as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, the February 2021 […]
Even with only partial data, nursing homes were the second-deadliest workplace amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis — and the missing numbers may well push the setting into the top spot. U.S. nursing homes logged 80 deaths for every 100,000 full-time employees last year, Scientific American concluded in a study published […]
COVID-19 outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities are affected by more than geography, and nursing home operators have tools and actions they can take to mitigate the spread of the virus in their facilities, the Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) argued in a report released on Thursday. “Since the start of the pandemic, one of the […]
The Biden administration this week moved closer to installing its top health care leaders, with reports of an upcoming pick for the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and a set confirmation hearing date for its nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). President Biden will select […]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis in nursing homes continues to make headlines amid accusations of a deliberate cover-up, but the embattled executive this week promised to explore reforms targeted at for-profit facility owners. “I have long believed that there is a tension in a for-profit nursing home, because those institutions […]