Chicago, Illinois — A Cook County judge has allowed a class action lawsuit against Alden Group to move forward, clearing the way for depositions of owners, administrators, workers, and residents over claims that the Chicago-area nursing home chain deliberately kept staffing dangerously low to cut costs. The ruling, issued earlier this month by Associate Judge Myron Mackoff, found that the plaintiffs have a sound legal basis to proceed. If the allegations hold up in discovery, Alden — which operates more than 40 facilities in the Chicago area, Rockford, and Wisconsin — could face trial over what the suit describes as…
Author: Ahuva S
Victoria, Texas — Less than four years ago, Wellsential Health was a regional nonprofit operating nursing homes across Texas. Today, it’s the largest nonprofit skilled nursing provider in the United States by bed count — and the people running it say the growth wasn’t driven by acquisitions for acquisitions’ sake. It was driven by a deliberate, grinding focus on workforce. The company now operates 68 facilities with 8,880 licensed beds, surpassing Good Samaritan, which had shrunk to roughly 7,100 beds as it pulled back from markets. That milestone, reported this week, marks a notable shift in the nonprofit sector at…
Hartford, Connecticut — Connecticut lawmakers are moving to pull back the curtain on who actually owns the state’s nursing homes, and private equity firms are paying close attention. Legislation advancing through the state Senate would require private equity companies that own nursing homes to submit detailed financial disclosures to the Department of Social Services each year — including investor names, business addresses, and thorough financial breakdowns. A second provision would bar those firms from selling or transferring nursing home property within five years of purchase, unless the state’s Public Health Commissioner signs off. The bill, SB 125, cleared the Aging…
Washington, D.C. — A major new industry report released Tuesday shows that nursing homes across the country have made concrete, measurable progress on quality and workforce stability since the pandemic, with tens of thousands fewer emergency room visits, more patients going home, and nurse turnover dropping by nearly half. The findings come from the American Health Care Association’s 2026 Quality Update, which analyzed publicly reported federal data on quality measures for nursing homes posted on Medicare’s Care Compare website. The report covers the period from 2023 to 2025. By the numbers For short-stay residents — patients admitted for post-acute recovery…
New Canaan, Connecticut — Skilled nursing facilities changed hands at a pace not seen in years during the first quarter of 2026, with deal volume jumping 36% above the 2025 quarterly average, according to new acquisition data released Monday by LevinPro LTC. The broader seniors housing and care market recorded 231 publicly announced transactions in Q1 2026 — a 25.5% increase from the same period a year ago, even as the quarter fell short of the record-breaking pace set in Q4 2025. Skilled nursing accounted for 36% of all deals, second only to assisted living at 46.8%. “It was always…
Salt Lake City, Utah — When a man’s discharge date arrived at a Utah long-term care facility, he had no home, no family, and no plan. Staff walked him outside without his walker and offered to call him an Uber. He said he’d hitchhike instead. They let him go. He ended up in a homeless shelter. That story, recounted by Alianne Sipes, Utah’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman, captures a problem that’s been quietly growing across the country. Nursing homes are legally required to find a safe discharge destination for every resident leaving their care. But a new investigation by industry reports…
Washington, D.C. — When congressional Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, they handed states a massive new job: verify whether millions of Medicaid enrollees are actually working. The problem is, many states say they don’t have nearly enough people to do it. A new report from KFF Health News, drawing on interviews with state agencies across the country, finds that Medicaid offices are already stretched thin — and the incoming wave of work rule requirements is about to make things significantly worse. Under the new law, states will have to verify whether enrollees meet work requirements…
Dallas, Texas — The clock is ticking for nursing homes interested in CMS’s new long-term care payment model, and experts are urging providers not to underestimate what they’re getting into. Applications for the Long-Term Enhanced ACO Design model — known as LEAD — are due May 17, giving facilities just weeks to decide whether to join a 10-year program that launches January 1, 2027. That’s a tight window by any measure, and some in the industry are already raising red flags about how quickly operators are expected to commit to a deeply complex structure. What LEAD is — and why…
Baltimore, Maryland — A new federal proposal would force nursing homes to track and submit detailed clinical data on every resident receiving covered skilled care — regardless of who’s paying the bill. For an industry already drowning in compliance requirements, that’s a significant expansion of paperwork, and CMS’s own regulatory analysis estimates the added burden will run into the millions of hours. The requirement is buried inside the proposed rule for the Skilled Nursing Facility Prospective Payment System for fiscal year 2027, which CMS published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. On the surface, the rule is mostly about the…
Washington, D.C. — A coalition of major hospital associations is calling on Congress to overhaul the payment system for long-term acute care hospitals, warning that more than a quarter of the country’s specialized post-acute facilities have shut their doors in the last decade — and that more closures are coming without significant reform. The American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the National Association of Long Term Hospitals, and the Coalition of Long-Term Acute-Care Hospitals released a set of formal reform principles last week aimed at stabilizing the long-term acute care hospital (LTCH) field. The principles come amid growing…
