The skilled nursing industry is facing three major threats at this point in the pandemic: lawsuits tied to Covid cases, the continued staffing shortage and limited access to capital. That’s according to Cecily Dumas and Scott Prince of Cleveland, Ohio-based law firm BakerHostetler and Jerry Seelig, founder and CEO of consulting firm Seelig+Cussigh HCO in […]
Category: Compliance
Though many nursing home providers and industry advocates pushed for test-out options when the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers was first announced, data from Mississippi shows a minimal increase when such an exemption was instituted. Staff vaccination rates increased from 43% before the state enacted a test-out mandate to 51.3% over three months […]
In light of steadily increasing vaccination rates for nursing home staff and residents, and overall improvement to outbreaks in the space, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Thursday said it is phasing out some of the temporary waivers linked to COVID-19 and the public health emergency (PHE). Among those is the temporary […]
Direct care workers were the latest to meet with federal agencies, following the unveiling of Biden’s nursing home package. Ownership accountability, adequate staffing hours and higher pay are among the main asks of nursing home staff that have stayed on through the pandemic. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure stressed the […]
Identifying the difference between nursing home landlords, lenders and operators, and even setting new requirements for each, may help ensure profits better match quality in the space moving forward. That’s the argument being put forward by some academic researchers who have focused on nursing home ownership structures. And their arguments are helping to inform federal […]
Capital providers dealing in the skilled nursing space are pushing back on the White House’s position on institutional capital, stressing the need for it in the sector. While institutional capital is critical to many of the key players in the space, some capital providers say newer owner-operators will have a hard time getting the necessary […]
Nursing homes in Kansas run the risk of losing their federal funding, following Gov. Laura Kelly’s call to deter enforcement of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shared its plans in a letter dated March 18 to reduce survey and certification funding by $348,723 for this year if the […]
People over the age of 50 who have received an initial booster dose at least four months ago may now receive another, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration recommended a second booster dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Modena COVID-19 vaccine and the Centers for […]
Twenty-plus states called the National Guard to support nursing homes most recently during the winter months of 2021, with the more contagious omicron variant leaving staff out sick at a time when the workforce was already hobbled. The variant left state leadership with no other choice but to call in extra help. For nursing homes […]
Even skilled nursing industry insiders may not know a whole lot about the investor who recently bought Diversicare Healthcare Services properties – Ephram “Mordy” Lahasky. The private investor doesn’t maintain a corporate website and has “largely avoided reporters for years,” according to a MarketWatch article published Wednesday. MarketWatch spoke with Lahasky for its story; Skilled […]
The American Health Care Association President and CEO Mark Parkinson called on the entire nursing home industry to fight against the “offensive” nursing home reform package laid out by the Biden administration this month as rhetoric around the reform continues to ramp up. Parkinson and other health care officials feel lawmakers are “pointing the finger” […]
Some design firms that cater to the skilled nursing community have not built traditional, more institutional nursing homes for some time, steering clients toward single-occupancy, small home models. For firms like Roanoke, Va.-based SFCS Architects, the Biden administration’s call to promote private rooms in the nursing home industry meets the moment and plans for future […]
A Republican senator is calling on the Justice Department to open an investigation into the “egregious and flagrant conditions” at the Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Center, a nursing home that has made national headlines amid the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, urging […]
CareTrust REIT (Nasdaq: CTRE) has a new CEO and is embarking on what leadership is calling a pivotal year as the company takes steps to mitigate the risk in its portfolio and pursue new avenues, while remaining active in its core business markets. It’s been a busy few months for new CEO David Sedgwick. The […]
The former head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services this week expressed disappointment in the Biden administration’s nursing home policy proposals, calling the measures “short-sighted” and “outdated policy prescriptions.” In an op-ed published Monday in Modern Healthcare, Seema Verma called on the White House to instead take a more results-oriented approach instead of […]
Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) will pay $3.25 million to settle allegations that it submitted false nursing home staffing data to the federal government and improperly handled resident discharges, the California Attorney General’s Office announced late last week. The settlement agreement comes one year after then-California attorney general Xavier Becerra filed a lawsuit against Tenn.-based […]
As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) vaccine mandate deadline looms this week, nursing homes across the country have stepped up to get their staff vaccinated in time – while still lagging on booster numbers. Nearly 85% of nursing home staff per facility are vaccinated, according to CMS data, and 87.3% of residents […]
Movement at the state and federal level has prompted an expedited shift to more private settings in nursing homes. While the trend isn’t entirely new for the industry, the push from government agencies to make it a compliance issue has garnered mixed reactions. The Biden administration called for reduced room crowding in nursing homes in […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is in a “full court sprint” toward fulfilling the Biden administration’s proposed nursing home reforms first announced last week, CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum said during a stakeholder call on Thursday. Twenty-one initiatives across five strategic goals will have short-, mid- and long-term timelines for implementation, […]
The value-based purchasing program (VBP) may not be offering sufficient incentives for nursing homes to improve, particularly for low-performing facilities in areas with underserved populations. Only 0.7% of poor-performing skilled nursing facilities were able to improve enough to avoid a financial penalty under VBP, a JAMA study found – the program didn’t “offer a viable […]
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