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Health Care Capsule: Improving Nursing Home Quality and Information

GAO-22-105422 Published: Jan 14, 2022. Publicly Released: Jan 14, 2022.
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Fast Facts

This Health Care Capsule summarizes our extensive work on nursing homes, including our assessments of the quality of care, COVID-19 response, consumer information concerns, and more. The pandemic brought into sharper focus problems with nursing home quality that we have long highlighted, such as persistent infection control challenges.

We have recommended, among other things, that the government provide consumers with more information on care quality—such as more data on nurse staffing and COVID-19 vaccination rates. We also recommended ways to make it easier for consumers to compare the quality of care in nursing homes across the nation.

a senior citizen in a wheelchair

Highlights

This capsule summarizes past GAO reports on concerns about nursing home quality of care, consumer information, and COVID-19. It also describes relevant GAO recommendations and agency efforts to address them and identifies relevant policy questions.

For more information, contact John E. Dicken at (202) 512-7114 or DickenJ@gao.gov or Sharon M. Silas at (202) 512-7114 or SilasS@gao.gov.

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Health Care
Access to health careHealth careMedicaidMedicareNursing homespandemicsPublic healthQuality of careVaccinationsVeteransVeterans affairs