Hundreds of nursing homes have received nearly $2.5 billion in mortgages and loans guaranteed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development since 2009 despite getting the lowest possible rating from federal health officials.
“Nursing homes providing poor care routinely have received HUD-insured acquisition, construction, refinancing and improvement loans all over the country,” according to the Center for Public Integrity.
“In fact, since 2001 hundreds of the nation’s worst-ranked nursing homes have received one, and in many cases two, low-cost, HUD-backed mortgages worth close to $2.5 billion,” the center said in a report published Thursday.
The center is a nonprofit foundation started in 1989 and devoted to investigative journalism “revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions,” according to its web site.
Nursing homes are rated annually by the Department of Health and Human Services using a rating system in which the best get five stars and the worst one star.
The mortgage and loan guarantees have been awarded for years despite repeated warnings by the Government Accountability Office and the HUD inspector general.
“Even though HUD restructured the office that runs the program in 2008 to streamline the mortgage application process and requires submission of the latest quality reports in evaluating potential construction and rehabilitation loans, the number and volume of one-star facilities that got HUD insurance rose each year from 2009 to 2012,” the center said.
Ohio had the largest number of such homes with 30, while Illinois was second with 20 and California was third.
The center also said it found that “more than 80 percent of nursing homes are reporting higher levels of registered nurse care to a government-run website for consumers than are reflected in their reports to Medicare.”
Go here for the complete report and previous reporting on related issues by the center.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
