A new report from the Government Accountability Office report estimates that 580, or 4 percent, of America’s approximately 16,000 nursing homes are troubled enough to qualify for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “Special Focus Facility” designation. Because of CMS’ limited resources, only 136 are.
Special Focus Facilities, which are evaluated based on deficiencies and revisited to ensure compliance, are chosen from a list of the 15 worst homes in each state. Using more objective criteria based on CMS recommendations, the GAO report found that, in reality, the nation’s worst homes don’t follow such a neat distribution “with 8 states having no such homes and 10 others having from 21 to 52 such homes.”
Legislators, including influential voices like Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are saying the report shows that the “Special Focus Facility” program should be expanded to include more low-quality homes, Freking reported.
The GAO also released a profile of the most common sort of under-performing nursing home:
The worst-performing ones tend to be for-profit facilities affiliated with a chain of nursing homes. They are more likely to be a larger facility, averaging 102 residents, while other nursing homes not identified as among the worst had 89 residents on average.
Find the full 57-page report here.
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