HHS Releases New Data and Report on Hospital and Nursing Home Ownership

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acted to promote competition and transparency in our nation’s health- care system that can improve the safety and quality of nursing homes and hospitals. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is releasing data publicly—for the first time—on mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership from 2016-2022 for hospitals and nursing homes enrolled in Medicare. This data is a new tool for researchers, state and federal enforcement agencies, and the public to better understand the impacts of consolidation on health-care prices and quality of care.

HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) is also releasing a related report—an analysis of the new CMS data examining trends in changes of ownership over the past six years.

This all supports President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition, and advances the goal of improving transparency around nursing facility ownership and enhancing nursing home safety and quality, as outlined in the president’s State of the Union Action Plan for Protecting Seniors by Improving Safety and Quality of Care in the Nation’s Nursing Homes.

CMS’ data on the changes of ownership—which includes details on mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations—is now available here. The data can help researchers, enforcers, and the public analyze trends and issues in health-care markets, and more specifically, provide insight into how the ownership of health-care providers impacts costs and consumer outcomes. For example, ASPE’s report identifies several findings from the new dataset:

• Changes of ownership have been much more common in nursing homes than hospitals over the past six years.
• There is also wide ownership variation by state. For instance, 19% of hospitals (14 out of 73) in South Carolina were sold during this period, while most states had fewer than 4% of hospitals change ownership.
• A majority (62.3%) of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) that were purchased have a single organizational owner, 6.9% have multiple organizational owners, while 18.2% have only individual owners and 12.7% have both types of owners.

CMS expects to release updated change of ownership data on a quarterly basis. The CMS data will enhance transparency for hospitals and nursing homes patients, potential patients and their loved ones, as well as for policymakers and the communities where these facilities are located.

This new data release is just one of many steps HHS is taking to increase transparency and accountability, and to boost competition in the health-care industry.

For more information on the HHS data release, including publicly available data files, please visit this website for information on hospital change of ownership and this website for information on SNF change of ownership.

Read the ASPE report analyzing the new change in ownership data.