Watchdog faults federal efforts to improve care at worst nursing homes

Iowa, USA ( Iowa Capital Dispatch ) - A federal government oversight agency says the program intended to improve resident care at some of the nation’s worst nursing homes “is not working.”

The Special-Focus Facilities program, which is administered by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, identifies homes with serious, recurring quality-of-care issues and then imposes additional oversight on them in an effort to improve resident care.

That program “is not working,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General says in a new report , citing evidence that the homes which successfully graduate from the program exhibit quality-of care deficiencies soon after.

Between 2013 and 2022, the report states, almost two-thirds of the nursing home