The General Accounting Office (GAO) has issued a report entitled “Nursing Homes: CMS’s Special Focus Facility Methodology Should Better Target the Most Poorly Performing Homes, Which Tended to Be Chain Affiliated and For-Profit.” In this report, the GAO provides an overview of the Special Focus Facility (SFF) program, which targets nursing homes with severe and persistent quality of care problems, and examines potential refinements to CMS’s methodology to more accurately identify the most poorly performing homes. The GAO recommends that CMS consider a home’s relative performance nationally when allocating SFFs across states and refine its methodology for the identification of SFFs. CMS generally agreed with the GAO’s recommendations.
