Ownership Data for Medicare-Certified Hospitals Available to Public
According to a Dec. 20 press release, in support of President Biden’s Executive Order on promoting competition and the Administration’s commitment to transparency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is releasing ownership data for all Medicare-certified hospitals. This is the first time that anyone can review detailed information on the ownership of approximately 7,000 hospitals certified to participate in the Medicare program on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website.
The press release states that “Today’s announcement builds on the Department’s historic releases of data and unprecedented efforts to increase transparency. In April, CMS released data publicly—for the first time ever—on mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership from 2016-2022 for hospitals and nursing homes enrolled in Medicare. In September, CMS released additional data publicly on the ownership of approximately 15,000 nursing homes certified as a Medicare Skilled Nursing Facility, regardless of any change in ownership, including providing more information about organizational owners of nursing homes.”
That said, “The new information posted today also includes detailed information on the ownership of more than 7,000 Hospitals certified to participate in the Medicare program regardless of any change in ownership. The data elements include:
- enrollment information such as organization name, type, practice location addresses (e.g., off campus), National Provider Identifier (NPI), CMS Certification Number (CCN);
- detailed information about each owner such as whether it is an organization or an individual and whether it is a direct owner or indirect owner (that is, there is at least one subsidiary between it and the provider); and
- a numerical associate ID for each owner to enable linkage to the enrollment file.”
Transparency of facility ownership, according to the release, will benefit researchers and enforcement agencies by allowing them to identify common owners that have a history of poor performance, to analyze data and trends on market consolidation, and assessing relationships between ownership and changes in costs and outcomes.
CMS says that it will release updated hospital ownership data on a monthly basis. The data, including the data posted on Dec. 20, can be reviewed on data.cms.gov. The data can be downloaded in excel file format for ease of use for research purposes.
