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CMS
NEWS
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April
20, 2023
Contact:
CMS Media Relations
(202)
690-6145 | CMS
Media Inquiries
For
the First Time, HHS Is Making Ownership Data for All
Medicare-Certified Hospice and Home Health Agencies Publicly
Available
The
Biden-Harris Administration has made promoting competition and
protecting consumers a top priority. Today, in support of the
President’s Executive Order on promoting competition and the
Administration’s commitment to transparency, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is releasing
ownership data for all Medicare-certified hospice and home
health agencies. For the first time, anyone can now review
detailed information on the ownership of more than 6,000
hospices and 11,000 home health agencies certified to
participate in the Medicare program on the Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services (CMS) website.
“It’s
plain and simple: families deserve transparency when making
decisions about hospice and home health care for their loved
ones,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “President Biden has
called for unprecedented action to increase transparency – and
we are making more data publicly available than ever
before. Shining a light on ownership data is good for families,
good for researchers, and good for enforcement agencies. We
will continue delivering on the President’s directive to
promote competition and protect consumers.”
Today’s
announcement builds on the Department’s historic releases of
data and unprecedented efforts to increase transparency:
- In April
2022, CMS released data publicly on mergers, acquisitions,
consolidations, and changes of ownership from 2016-2022
for hospitals and nursing homes enrolled in Medicare.
- In September,
CMS released additional data publicly on the ownership of
approximately 15,000 nursing homes certified as a Medicare
Skilled Nursing Facility, regardless of any change in
ownership, including providing more detailed information
about organizational owners of nursing homes.
- In December,
CMS released detailed information on the ownership of more
than 7,000 hospitals certified to participate in the
Medicare program.
“Transitioning
to hospice care is often an emotionally overwhelming time for
many families,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said.
“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
information posted today includes detailed information on the
ownership of more than 6,000 hospices and 11,000 home health
agencies certified to participate in the Medicare program,
regardless of any change in ownership. The data elements
include: enrollment information such as organization name,
type, practice location addresses, National Provider Identifier
(NPI), CMS Certification Number (CCN); detailed information
about each owner such as whether it is an organization or an individual
and whether it is a direct owner or indirect owner (that is,
there is at least one subsidiary between it and the provider);
and a numerical associate ID for each owner to enable linkage
to the enrollment file. Additional files that include data on mergers,
acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership since
2016 for hospices and home health agencies enrolled in Medicare
are also being made available as part of this release.
Making
ownership information transparent benefits researchers and enforcement
agencies by allowing them to identify common owners that have
had histories of poor performance, analyze data and trends on
how market consolidation impacts consumers with increased costs
without necessarily improving quality of care, and evaluate the
relationships between ownership and changes in health care
costs and outcomes. Transparent ownership data benefits the
public by assisting patients, and their loved ones, in making
more informed decisions about care. HHS plans to analyze these
data to identify ways to inform policy approaches that can
improve competition in health care, a key priority for the
Biden-Harris administration.
Review
hospice
enrollments and HHA
enrollments on data.cms.gov.
CMS
expects to release updated hospice and home health ownership
data on a quarterly basis in a searchable format on
data.cms.gov, in addition to a flat Excel file available for
download to make it easier for researchers to use.
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