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January 28, 2025
In this Issue:
- Materials Available from Webinar on Recent Updates to Federal Nursing Home Surveyor Guidance
- Consumer Voice Participates in Advisory Committee on Healthcare Design
- LTCCC Finds that Most Problem Facilities are For-Profit
- Webinar on New In-Service Toolkits to Expand Behavioral Health Capacity
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Materials Available from Webinar on Recent Updates to Federal Nursing Home Surveyor Guidance
On November 18, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released revised guidance to nursing home surveyors. They then released additional revisions on January 15, 2025. Read Consumer Voice’s updated detailed explanation of these changes. These important revisions address several areas, including:
- Prohibitions on third-party financial guarantees.
- Inappropriate transfers and discharges.
- Unnecessary use of psychotropic medications.
- Misdiagnosing residents with schizophrenia.
- Training resources and investigation of sufficient nursing staff.
During this webinar, Consumer Voice's Lori Walsh, joined by Toby Edelman from The Center for Medicare Advocacy and Eric Carlson from Justice in Aging, detailed these and other important updates and how they will affect resident lives.
Get the Powerpoint, recording, and other materials from the webinar on our website.
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Consumer Voice Participates in Advisory Committee on Healthcare Design
The Center for Health Design is a non-profit focusing on improving the quality of healthcare through design of the built environment. Last week, the Center held a workshop providing insight on the physical, mental and societal challenges posed when individuals age, and explore programming and design interventions that can enhance the health, longevity, safety and social connections of older adults. Consumer Voice Policy and Program Specialist Lori Walsh is a member of the advisory committee for the Center.
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LTCCC Report Finds that Most Problem Facilities are For-Profit
The Long Term Care Community Coalition (LTCCC) has released a new report using new federal data on five-star ratings, ownership type, enforcement actions, and other critical information for the nearly 15,000 U.S. nursing homes in the federal CMS dataset. The report identifies "Problem Facilities" which are facilities that are in the federal Special Focus Facility (SFF) Program, SFF Candidates, or assigned a one-star overall rating.
The recent report found that:
- One in four U.S. nursing homes (24.8%) is a Problem Facility.
- Nearly three in four nursing homes (72.7%) are for-profit facilities.
- Among Problem Facilities, 86.0% are for-profit.
Read the report.
In 2023, Consumer Voice published a one-pager demonstrating the difference between staffing in for-profit versus non-profit nursing homes. According to our findings, on average, non-profit nursing homes staff 23% higher than for-profit homes.
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Webinar on New In-Service Toolkits to Expand Behavioral Health Capacity
The Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health in Nursing Facilities (COE-NF) is holding a webinar Tuesday, February 25th at 2:00pm ET, "Utilizing In-Service Toolkits to Expand Behavioral Health Capacity." The new in-service toolkits address essential topics such as de-escalation, substance use disorder, and major depressive disorder. Designed to guide facility education leads, the toolkits provide comprehensive support for every step of the training process, from scheduling and promoting to hosting and facilitating behavioral health education sessions.
Register for the webinar.
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