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The Biden administration today called for nursing homes to provide a complete picture of their owners and operators, proposing a new federal rule central to the president’s plans to improve the quality of care and contain healthcare costs at the facilities. The announcement comes a month after a report from the federal Government Accountability Office called for Medicare and Medicaid regulators to collect more information about nursing home ownership and to share it, in plain terms, with consumers. (Fraser, 2/13)

Nursing homes would have to disclose whether private equity firms or real estate investment trusts own or help operate their facilities under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Monday. President Joe Biden's administration contends that promoting transparency in nursing home ownership would improve safety and quality. Research has linked private equity and REIT ownership to lower staffing levels and subpar quality care. (Kacik, 2/13)

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. (Armour, 2/13)

“President Biden has made clear: improving our nation’s nursing homes is an urgent priority, and this Administration is not afraid to take bold action to tackle this head-on,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in which it found that nursing home ownership information is not structured in a way that allows consumers to know if different nursing homes share the same owners. (Choi, 2/13)

The federal government notched the second highest number of False Claims Act settlements in history and judgments in the last fiscal year, and two legal experts said the long-term care industry should be warned that that pace will likely continue. The Department of Justice announced that settlements and judgments in False Claims Act cases exceeded $2.2 billion with the vast majority — $1.7 billion — stemming from healthcare cases. In addition, the department’s press release noted that $1.9 billion of the total was related to qui tam, or whistleblower, cases. (Towhey, 2/13)

President Joe Biden’s push to ban noncompete agreements that limit a worker’s ability to leave their job for a competitor could cause a major shake-up in the health care industry, where the agreements have become pervasive among doctors and nurses. The Biden administration is in the final stages of issuing a rule that would ban employers across industries from putting provisions in an employment agreement barring workers from moving to a competitor or starting their own enterprise, a move he touted during his State of the Union address last week. (Pettypiece, 2/13)