The Biden administration on Monday proposed requiring nursing homes to disclose more information about their ownership and management to provide clarity about investments by private-equity companies or real-estate investment trusts, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The proposal also would require nursing homes that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to share more information about individuals or organizations that provide administrative services or clinical consulting to nursing homes. Currently, families often don’t know what companies may provide care in nursing homes. The information would be made public, administration officials said. They said the data is important because there are mounting concerns about the quality of care of nursing facilities that are owned by private-equity companies and other types of investment firms — an ownership relationship that has grown since 2011. President Biden in his 2022 State of the Union address criticized private-equity ownership of nursing homes, saying the arrangements drive down quality and raise costs. Residents in nursing homes that are acquired by private equity companies were about 11% more likely to have an emergency department visit that could have been prevented compared with residents in for-profit nursing homes that aren’t associated with private equity, according to a Nov. 19, 2021, study cited by the administration and published in JAMA Health Forum.
