CMS Posts Hospice and Home Health Agency Ownership Information
Key Points:
- Follows similar posting for SNFs and Hospitals
- Compliance Officers can know more about entities with which there is a relationship
CMS announced in April 2023 that it is releasing, for public viewing, ownership data for more than 6,000 hospices and 11,000 home health agencies certified to participate in the Medicare program. 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 if it is an organization or an individual and whether it is a direct owner or indirect owner; and a numerical associate ID for each owner to enable linkage to the enrollment file. CMS plans to release updated data quarterly in a searchable format on data.cms.gov, in addition to a flat Excel file available for download to make it easier to use. Making ownership information available is designed to assist 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 the quality of care, and evaluate the relationships between ownership and changes in health care costs and outcomes. This information is also designed to benefit the public by assisting in making more informed care decisions. This follows release of similar information for other provider groups. In September 2022, they publicly released additional data on the ownership of approximately 15,000 Medicare Skilled Nursing Facilities. The following December, CMS released detailed information on the ownership of more than 7,000 hospitals certified to participate in the Medicare program.
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