by James C. Sherlock

The author cannot help but note the service the Virginia Health Care Association (VHCA), the lobbyist for the nursing home industry, offers to Virginia consumers. It deserves recognition.

A person looking for a nursing home for mom can visit the VHCA website to find a “quality care provider.” Someone living in Henrico County on such a search will find this:

“Quality Care Providers” indeed. Henrico Health & Rehabilitation Center, as regular readers of this author and anyone who checks Medicare Compare will know, is Virginia’s sole Special Focus Facility. By that designation, it is the worst nursing home in Virginia.

It would be useful if VHCA made note of that, but alas, it does not. So when searchers for mom’s nursing home click on the link to that facility, they find this.

Well. Perhaps not “The Smartest Choice.”

The symbol in the upper left-hand corner indicates Henrico Health & Rehab is a member of Virginia’s largest chain, Medical Facilities of America, doing business as Lifeworks Rehab. Of course it is.

A New York statute offers a solution.

Beginning on December 26, 2024, nursing homes in New York State were obligated by state law to post their Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Five-Star ratings in each of the three Five-Star domains: health inspections, staffing, and quality measures.

2025 New York Laws
PBH – Public Health
Article 28 – Hospitals
2808-E*2 – Nursing Home Ratings.

* § 2808-e. Nursing home ratings. 1. The commissioner shall provide that the most recent star rating of every nursing home facility in the state, assigned pursuant to the inspection rating system of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (overall CMS rating), shall be prominently displayed on the home page of the department’s website, or by an easily accessible link to such information.

2.  Each nursing home facility shall post its overall CMS rating and ratings for health inspections, staffing and quality measures on the homepage of any website maintained by such facility and on any website or webpage relating to such facility maintained by an entity which owns or operates such facility. Each nursing home shall also conspicuously post its most recent overall CMS rating and ratings for health inspections, staffing and quality measures so that it is visible to the general public and to residents.

Here is a current example of that statute executed on the home page of a New York nursing home.

A nursing home lobbyist organization opposed that law on the grounds that it would prove disturbing to residents. Not making that up.

Bottom Line

It seems the least Virginia can do to support such important life choices is to ensure that consumers are not misled in choosing a nursing home.

Medicare Compare ratings offer Commonwealth consumers a way to make informed choices. Not nearly all of them will ever know to use it, especially when pressed to make a quick choice upon release from a hospital, even though skilled nursing care is still required. The New York approach is one way to give patients and their caregivers better information.

Virginia should enact a similar law. The nursing home lobby will oppose it because it will prove disturbing to the owners of the worst facilities.

Citizens will find that a feature, not a bug.