15 long-term care facilities – also known as nursing homes – that received money from New Jersey Medicaid were rated one star out of five. That means millions of taxpayer dollars went to chronic one-star long-term care facilities. We looked at them in February 2022 to see what kind of care some 1,850 New Jersey residents were receiving. In September 2022, we updated the data.
Ratings are based on issues found at LTCs during health inspections, quality measures reported by nursing homes, and the number of nursing staff at facilites.
Over $300 million in Medicaid money has flowed to LTCs that are repeatedly rated one star between fiscal years 2017-2019.
For-profit ownership dominates among one-star LTCs. Among all New Jersey LTCs, 77 percent are operated for profit, 21 percent non-profit, and 2 percent are government-owned.
The average Overall Rating for New Jersey Medicaid LTCs is 3.6 (5 being the highest), which is slightly better than the national average of 3.1.
1,850 individuals live at the 15 one-star LTCs on our list.
In Fiscal Year 2020, New Jersey Medicaid introduced the QIPP program to give LTCs bonus payments for meeting or exceeding certain quality metrics.
However, we found that one-star LTCs are receiving nearly the same amount of QIPP payments as highly-rated LTCs.
So, is QIPP actually incentivizing high-quality care in nursing homes?