On Thursday, April 20, 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released ownership data for all Medicare-certified hospice and home health agencies on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website. Under this release, several data elements were provided, including:
- Enrollment information such as organization name, type, practice location, National Provider Identifier (NPI) and CMS Certification Number (CCN); and
- Detailed information about each owner such as the owner’s name, whether it is an organization or an individual, and whether it is a direct or indirect owner.
Both lists are currently available for viewing and download at data.cms.gov (Hospice Owners, Home Health Agency Owners). Additional files that include data on mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership of CMS-enrolled hospices and home health agencies since 2016 are also being made available as part of this release. CMS expects to release updated ownership data on a quarterly basis in a searchable format on data.cms.gov, in addition to a flat Excel file available for download to make it easier for researchers to use.
CMS states that making ownership information transparent benefits researchers and enforcement agencies by allowing them to identify common owners that have had histories of poor performance, analyze data and trends on how market consolidation impacts consumers with increased costs without necessarily improving quality of care, and evaluate the relationships between ownership and changes in health care costs and outcome. Increasing the transparency in healthcare has been a key focus under the Biden-Harris administration, prompting several recent public data releases on Medicare-enrolled providers, including mergers and acquisitions for hospitals and nursing homes, ownership of Medicare Skilled Nursing Facilities, and ownership of participant hospitals across the country.
