Biden-Harris Administration Strengthens Oversight of Nation’s Poorest-Performing Nursing Homes

As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued commitment to improve the safety and quality of care for nursing home residents, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is increasing scrutiny and oversight over the country’s poorest-performing nursing facilities in an effort to immediately improve the care they deliver. In a series of revisions to the Special Focus Facility (SFF) Program, CMS will toughen requirements for completion of the program and increase enforcement actions for facilities that fail to demonstrate improvement. CMS is also calling on states to consider a facility’s staffing level in determining which facilities enter the SFF Program.

Today’s announcement is part of a series of new actions the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to increase accountability of bad actors in the nursing home industry, improve the quality of nursing homes and make them safer. Today’s action fulfills a promise laid out in President Biden’s State of the Union Action Plan for Protecting Seniors by Improving Safety and Quality of Care in the Nation’s Nursing Homes to overhaul the SFF Program to strengthen scrutiny over more poor-performing nursing homes, improve care for the affected residents more quickly, and better hold facilities accountable for improper and unsafe care.