March 15, 2023
Rep. Mike Levin
1030 Longworth House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick
271 Cannon House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515
Dear Representatives Levin and Fitzpatrick:
On behalf of the millions of members and supporters of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, I write to endorse your bill, the “Nursing Home Disclosure Act” (H.R. 177). The National Committee commends you for introducing this transparency and accountability legislation, which directs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to require nursing facilities to report information on medical directors that would be featured on the federal government’s website and online public resource, Nursing Home Compare. Launched in 2007, the website was developed and is maintained by CMS, and is intended to help consumers evaluate skilled nursing facilities based on data that are reported to the federal government.
In the wake of Covid-19, it is clear that more information about nursing home medical directors is a critical component in efforts aimed at improving the quality of care for our nation’s 1.3 million older adults who receive services in Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities. A national registry of medical directors and the nursing homes they serve would provide families and residents with valuable information about who is responsible for making many of the critical medical decisions about their care. The bill anticipates that Nursing Home Compare would identify:
- nursing homes that have two, three, or more physicians named as medical directors;
- nursing homes with a single physician who is named as medical director;
- nursing homes where the medical director changes frequently each year; and
- nursing homes that do not have a named physician medical director.
In a seminal report issued in April 2022, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) recommends developing a publicly available national database of information about the basic demographics and training of the medical director, among other pieces of information. As the NASEM report noted, “CMS does not keep any record of the characteristics of nursing home medical directors (e.g., age, medical specialty, certification status, geriatric or medical director training, number of patients served).” It is time for this information to be available to the public.
For these reasons, the National Committee proudly endorses the Nursing Home Disclosure Act. This legislation represents a bold step on behalf of seniors and all Americans, and we thank you for leadership on these vitally important matters. We look forward to working with you to enact this important legislation.
Sincerely,
Max Richtman
President and CEO