CMS to ‘Crack Down’ on Troubled Nursing Homes Through Special Focus Facility Program Changes

In its latest move to increase scrutiny of the skilled nursing industry, the Biden administration is toughening requirements for nursing homes that fall into its Special Focus Facilities (SFF) program.

Specifically, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is making completion requirements more challenging and increasing enforcement actions if SNFs fail to show improvement, according to a statement issued by the federal agency on Friday.

Criteria for successful completion of the SFF program will now have a threshold that prevents a facility from exiting based on total number of deficiencies, according to CMS. There will be no more “graduating” from the program’s enhanced scrutiny without showing that a facility has made systemic improvements in quality.

SFF program facilities face more severe, escalating enforcement if they show continued noncompliance with “little or no” effort toward improving performance, CMS officials said.

By imposing harsher penalties, CMS hopes operators will work harder to get facilities out of the program at a faster rate. This, in turn, would allow the federal entity to enroll more facilities in the program and “promote sustainability of facilities’ improvements.”