Washington, D.C. — Federal investigators have uncovered a disturbing pattern in nursing homes across the country: facilities were diagnosing residents with schizophrenia who didn’t have the condition, then using those fake diagnoses to justify giving them powerful antipsychotic drugs. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed 40 nursing homes that underwent pilot audits by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and found widespread abuse. Medical directors were inappropriately labeling residents with schizophrenia to mask the misuse of antipsychotic medications, according to two OIG issue briefs released in March 2026. The problem runs deeper than just bad diagnoses. Antipsychotic…
Author: Sarah K
Plano, Texas — PACS Group is growing again. The nation’s second-largest skilled nursing operator announced Monday it will assume operations for 34 facilities across six western states, adding roughly 3,600 beds to its portfolio. The deal extends the company’s reach into Texas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. According to company filings and industry reports, the acquisition involves facilities previously operated by Eduro Healthcare, a family-owned company that’s been in the senior care business for nearly two decades. The bulk of the new properties sit in Texas — 22 facilities — with six in Montana and the…
Washington, D.C. — Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund is now projected to run dry in 2033, a full quarter earlier than previously estimated, according to the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report released earlier this month. For skilled nursing facilities that depend heavily on Medicare Part A reimbursement, the timeline carries real implications. The trustees pointed to changes in the 2025 budget reconciliation bill as the primary driver behind the accelerated depletion date. Lower-than-expected Social Security tax revenue — one of the main funding sources for Part A — has reshaped the program’s financial outlook. Nursing home spending through Medicare reached approximately…
Washington, D.C. — A new audit by federal watchdogs has exposed significant flaws in how nursing homes report staffing data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — and the findings suggest the agency charged with oversight may be relying on numbers that do not add up. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General reviewed a sample of registered nurse staffing hours reported through CMS’s Payroll-Based Journal system for March 2024. What they found raises serious questions about data integrity at a time when policymakers are making consequential decisions based on those very figures. The…
Columbus, Ohio — The Ohio state legislature has cleared $875 million in long-overdue Medicaid payments for the state’s nursing homes, ending a yearlong standoff over a flawed reimbursement formula. There’s a string attached, though: operators who take the money must waive future legal claims tied to the disputed payments. The measure, tucked into a larger omnibus bill, now awaits Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature. The funds represent quality incentive payments operators earned but never received because the state’s Medicaid rate calculation didn’t match what Ohio law required. A formula that cost providers nearly a billion dollars Ohio’s nursing facility operators argued…
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — A federal appeals court has handed nursing home operators a major win, ruling that a category of overtime lawsuit the Labor Department has aggressively pursued isn’t actually allowed under federal wage law. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued the 2–1 decision on June 3, partially reversing a $35.8 million judgment against Comprehensive Healthcare Management Services, a Pennsylvania-based operator of 15 nursing, rehab, and assisted living facilities. The case sprang from a 2017 Department of Labor investigation that grew into a sweeping Fair Labor Standards Act claim covering nearly 6,000 workers. At the heart of the ruling…
Washington, D.C. — Local paramedics and police officers may soon become a more active line of defense against nursing home abuse, thanks to a new federal training package built to teach them what to watch for and how to act on it. The U.S. Department of Justice partnered with the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care to release a toolkit aimed at frontline first responders. It includes eight short module videos and matching fact sheets that walk EMTs, firefighters, and police through the kinds of situations they’re likely to run into when they’re called to a long-term care facility,…
Atlanta, Georgia — A new wave of nuclear courtroom verdicts is reshaping the legal risk facing nursing home operators, and plaintiffs’ lawyers are no longer stopping at the bedside. They’re going after the investors, asset managers and private equity firms sitting behind the buildings, and juries are rewarding them with awards that are climbing into nine figures. That’s the picture sketched by attorneys, insurers and industry analysts as the legal climate for skilled nursing grows tougher. According to industry sources, an “aberrant” or “nuclear” verdict typically refers to any jury award above $10 million that exceeds what the underlying economic…
Nursing home occupancy is climbing again, rents are rising at the fastest pace since the financial crisis, and yet almost no one is breaking ground on new buildings. That’s the strange picture coming out of a new Marcus & Millichap report, which lays out a sector where demand is finally outrunning supply — but the math on new construction still doesn’t pencil. According to the brokerage, skilled nursing occupancy topped 87% in the first quarter of 2026. That’s the highest mark recorded since 2016, and it’s been enough to push annual rent growth above 5% — a pace the industry…
New York, New York — Skilled nursing facilities are pulling in real estate capital at a pace the sector hasn’t seen in years, and one of the more active private equity voices in the space says three forces are behind the rush. Jonathan Slusher, partner and head of senior living and healthcare at Northwind Group, told industry sources this month that buyers are increasingly treating skilled nursing as part of America’s “social infrastructure” — a framing that’s helping break the stigma some institutional capital still attaches to the space. Northwind has investments in more than 400 health care properties across…
