A recent Guardian investigation raises a disturbing question about who is really making medical decisions inside some nursing homes. According to the reporting, UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, may be exerting pressure on nursing homes to keep residents out of hospitals, even when hospital care is medically necessary. For elderly residents who rely entirely on
MedPAC’s latest proposal makes one thing painfully clear: the people deciding how much nursing homes should be paid are looking almost entirely at financial spreadsheets—not the reality of resident care. The commission is floating a 4% cut to Medicare’s base payment rate for skilled nursing facilities, arguing that margins are high, occupancy is stable, and
The bankruptcy of Genesis HealthCare is a devastating reminder of how corporate nursing home chains can harm residents twice — first through neglect, and then again by using the legal system to dodge accountability. Genesis didn’t file for Chapter 11 because it wanted to reorganize operations or improve care. It filed because it owed nearly
The latest proposal to overhaul the federal Five-Star Quality Rating System should concern every family searching for a safe nursing home. According to McKnight’s, CMS and federal advisers are considering a ratings redesign that would heavily weight one factor above all others — staffing — and the impact will be dramatic. Under the new model, only
Food pyramids released in 1992 (left) and yesterday. Images: HHS/USDA
A quiet federal rollback is about to make an already dangerous situation even worse. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services eliminated the safety requirement that nursing homes maintain a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, reducing it to just eight hours. For states like South Carolina — this
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