For the first time, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is making ownership data for all Medicare-certified hospice and home health agencies publicly available.
The Biden-Harris administration has prioritized fostering competition and safeguarding consumers and part of its commitment to transparency, according to an April 20 news release.
“It’s plain and simple: families deserve transparency when making decisions about hospice and home health care for their loved ones,” HSS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in the release.
On the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website, anyone can now check extensive information on the ownership of more than 6,000 hospices and 11,000 home health providers registered to participate in the Medicare program for the first time, the release reported.
“Transitioning to hospice care is often an emotionally overwhelming time for many families," CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in the release. "Making this data public increases transparency, giving families the information needed to help them identify the best care for their loved one. Providing information is a hallmark of this administration’s efforts to improve care because we understand that having good information allows people to make the best choices possible.”
The announcement is a continuation of the department's historic data disclosures and ground-breaking initiatives to foster more transparency. The CMS made data on hospital and nursing home enrollment in Medicare that involved mergers, acquisitions, consolidations and changes of ownership from 2016 to 2022 available to the public in April 2022, the release reported.
Regardless of any ownership changes, the CMS published further data on the ownership of about 15,000 nursing facilities recognized as Medicare Skilled Nursing Facilities in September 2022. This data included more specific information about organizational owners of nursing homes, according to the release.
More than 7,000 hospitals certified to participate in the Medicare program were the subject of a thorough report from the CMS in December 2022, the release said.
