As managed care plans become more and more relevant to the nursing home industry, it appears Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are experiencing less favorable outcomes, while using less post-acute care services than those on traditional fee-for-service Medicare. A study published in JAMA Health Forum on Friday suggests that MA enrollees reported less functional improvement while using […]
JAMA Health Forum
A Medicare Advantage bundled payment model for hip and knee replacements offered by Humana (NYSE: HUM) was associated with reduced skilled nursing facility use. These bundled payments were also linked to reduced spending overall for lower extremity joint replacements (LEJR) – while maintaining quality of care, according to a study published in JAMA Network. Of […]
For the last year, federal regulators have taken steps to increase nursing home ownership transparency, as part of the White House’s reform agenda. The most recent actions have centered on more clearly defining different types of ownership groups and making information more consumer-friendly – and have drawn concern and criticism from within the sector. About […]
As the Biden administration continues down its path toward comprehensive nursing home reform, owners and investors in the space have kept a close ear to the ground when it comes to federal leaders’ increasingly loud opposition toward certain for-profit models — perhaps for good reason. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Congressman Mark Takano of […]
As the skilled nursing sector looks back at a year and a half of vaccination efforts, data has shown that mandates at the federal and state level – specifically those without a test-out option – were an effective policy tool to increase rates without contributing meaningfully to worker shortages. Initial fears of a mass exodus […]
Staff-to-resident ratios in nursing homes were confirmed to be stable or higher than pre-pandemic levels during Covid outbreaks, as declining resident census outpaced reductions in staffing. Such findings fly in the face of federal efforts to establish a minimum staffing ratio. A JAMA Health Forum study published on Friday found that facility managers were more […]
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) owned about 12% of all skilled nursing assets as of 2021, equating to about 1,870 facilities. That’s according to a research letter published in JAMA Health. Researchers also examined REIT ownership trends of hospitals and other health care properties. The data comes at a time when the Biden administration and […]
Approximately 1.5 million health care workers lost their jobs during the early days of the pandemic, when surgeries were postponed and some facilities temporarily closed their doors. While most of those jobs returned by the fall of 2020, health care employment remained 2.7% lower than pre-pandemic levels as of November 2021. As many in the […]
Skilled nursing workers are in the midst of a mass exodus from the profession, and not even unprecedented wage increases can compensate for the concerns of the 238,000 caregivers who have left the industry since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The combination of workload, environment, culture and the physical and emotional strain exacerbated an […]
Despite seeing the largest wage increase over the course of the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, skilled nursing employment levels continued to fall at a faster rate than other health care sectors. That’s according to a study analyzing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employee and wage data released in the JAMA Health […]
Private equity acquisition of nursing homes is tied to increases in emergency room visits, hospitalizations and higher Medicare costs, according to a recently published JAMA Health Forum study. The study found PE firm-owned nursing homes were 11.1% more likely to have an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) emergency department (ED) visit and 8.7% more likely to […]
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