Indianapolis, Indiana — Nursing homes across Indiana lost out on $205.2 million in Medicaid supplemental payments that were supposed to boost their reimbursement, according to a federal audit released this week. Instead, county hospitals that own most of the state’s facilities recouped the money for themselves. The report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General paints a picture of a funding stream so murky that even federal watchdogs struggle to follow the dollars. In total, the OIG found that nearly half of Indiana’s supplemental payments — $479.8 million — ended up with nonstate government-owned entities…
Author: Chaya S
Hunt Valley, Maryland — Omega Healthcare Investors, one of the largest landlords in the nursing home business, made a bold bet this quarter: it paid a longtime partner $90 million to walk away from 32 Florida facilities so a bigger operator could take over. The move, disclosed during Omega’s third quarter earnings call, transfers the skilled nursing facilities from Airamid Health Services to PACS Group, one of Omega’s largest operating partners. For PACS, Florida becomes a new operating state. For Omega, the deal came with a price tag — the $90 million lease termination fee paid to Airamid — but…
Oxford, Ohio — The nursing homes that care for the highest share of Black, Indigenous and other residents of color are also the ones getting shortchanged the most by Medicaid, and new research suggests that gap is showing up in the quality of care those residents receive. Researchers from Miami University of Ohio and the University of Massachusetts Boston presented the findings at the LeadingAge annual meeting this week. Their work builds on a landmark 2024 study that found states pay, on average, just 82 cents in Medicaid reimbursement for every dollar a facility spends on care. Overall, 92% of…
The Ensign Group just told Wall Street what it plans to do with more than $1 billion in cash and available credit: keep buying. The nationwide operator, one of the largest skilled nursing companies in the country, raised its full-year guidance Wednesday after a third quarter marked by rising occupancy, stronger Medicare revenue and an acquisition pace that shows no sign of slowing. Buying 50 to 60 facilities a year is “doable,” Chief Investment Officer Chad Keetch said on the company’s earnings call — and leadership capacity, pricing and underwriting discipline are the only real brakes. The Numbers Behind the…
Nursing home care is getting pricier faster than just about any other corner of American health care — and the people providing it just lived through the worst month for job losses in nearly five years. That’s the picture painted by Altarum’s latest health care spending brief, which tracks prices and spending across the medical economy. Nursing home care prices climbed 3.7% in the year through September. Overall health care prices? They rose just 2.1% over the same stretch. Nursing home pricing has accelerated by nearly a full percentage point over the past two years, even as broader medical inflation…
Wappingers Falls, New York — A jury has ordered a 62-bed nursing home in the Hudson Valley to pay $6.8 million after finding it short-staffed every single day of a multi-year period, a verdict that hands residents and their families a new template for holding operators — and the individuals who own them — personally accountable. The class action verdict came down in Dutchess County against Sapphire Nursing at Wappingers, with jurors awarding more than $3.2 million in compensatory damages and adding $3.6 million in punitive damages on top. Four individuals — Machla Abramczyk, Esther Farkovits, Richard Platschek and Robert…
Albuquerque, New Mexico — The families who won negligence verdicts and wrongful death settlements against Genesis HealthCare just learned what their cases are worth under the company’s bankruptcy plan: roughly 26 cents on the dollar, at best. A federal judge signed off on Genesis’ Chapter 11 liquidation plan Wednesday, clearing the way for the nearly $1 billion sale of its 175 nursing homes. More than $200 million in company assets will move into a liquidation trust to pay unsecured creditors — a group that includes patients and families holding pending settlements, jury awards and lawsuits tied to personal injuries, negligence…
Washington — When an older veteran leaves the hospital and needs weeks of rehab in a nursing home, the choice of facility can shape how well — and how fast — they recover. A sweeping new federal analysis suggests that, most of the time, that choice goes badly. Researchers tracked nearly one million hospital-to-nursing-home transitions among veterans nationwide between 2015 and 2022, drawing on records that connect VA care, Medicare and Medicaid stays into a single picture. The results, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, are hard to square with two decades of public quality ratings: fewer than…
Washington, District of Columbia — The people who bathe, feed and lift America’s aging parents are in short supply, and the gap is about to get much worse. A new proposal out of the Brookings Institution argues that Washington could close part of it with a tool this field has never been offered: its own visa. Economist Tara Watson, writing for Brookings’ Hamilton Project, has proposed the H-1D — a temporary, employment-based visa designed specifically for direct care workers. Home health aides, personal care aides and nursing assistants would qualify, as long as they bring at least two years of…
Washington, D.C. — The federal government is preparing to stop asking nursing homes how many of their residents are sick with COVID-19, influenza, or RSV. A draft plan circulating inside the Trump administration would end the weekly reporting requirement that roughly 15,000 Medicare-certified nursing homes have lived with since the pandemic began, according to a summary obtained by The New York Times. The memo, written by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would also scrap a rule requiring facilities to educate staff about COVID vaccines and offer them. Nursing homes would still…
