On June 28, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began posting more detailed nursing home ownership information on the federal website Care Compare and on its data website, data.cms.gov, as promised by President Biden as part of his comprehensive 2022 nursing home reform agenda.
Care Compare will publish “affiliated entity names” (“Affiliated entities are groups of nursing homes sharing at least one individual or organizational owner, officer, or entity with operational/managerial control”) and “affiliated entity identification numbers (IDs) for each facility.” The ownership information is from the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS), “the electronic Medicare enrollment system and national data repository for individual and organizational providers who have enrolled or are enrolling in Medicare,” which is a self-reported database.
Linking to Data.cms.gov and typing the name of the affiliated entity calls up aggregate nursing home health, safety, and quality measure data “for groups of nursing homes that share an affiliated entity.”
For a step-by-step description of how to use the two websites and what will be found, go to: https://data.cms.gov/quality-of-care/nursing-home-affiliated-entity-performance-measures
Here is an illustration of how the system works and the information data.cms.gov reports (as of June 23, 2023).
Information for Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, one of the four nursing facilities under common ownership that were sued by New York State Attorney General Letitia James on June 28, 2023.
On the bottom of the nursing facility’s homepage on Care Compare is Affiliated entity name (Centers Health Care) and Affiliated entity ID (128).
- Click on “Open affiliated entity performance information” to get to the data.
- Click on View Data.
- In the search function, type “Centers Health Care.”
- Information appears for 35 facilities with Affiliated entity ID # 128.
Scroll to the right to get information, which (as of June 23, 2023) indicates that, with respect to the 35 Centers Health Care facilities:
- 1 of the 35 facilities is a Special Focus Facility and 5 are candidates
- 4 of the 35 facilities have an abuse icon
- The average overall 5-star rating is 2 stars [below average]
- The average health inspection rating is 1.8 [between much below average and below average]
- The average staffing rating is 1.6 [between much below average and below average]
- The average quality rating is 3.5 [between average and above average]
- The average total nurse hours per resident day is 3.3
- The average total weekend nurse hours per resident day is 2.8
- The average total registered nurse hours per resident day is 0.5
- The total number of fines is 48
- The average number of fines is 1.4
- The total amount of fines in dollars is $1,607,746.90
- The average amount of fines in dollars is $45,935.63
- Total number of payment denials is 4
July 13, 2023 – T. Edelman