The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for the first time in history shared its annual ratings on 130 VA nursing homes. While 60 of the VA’s nursing homes showed improvement in their quality score, 44 percent of the facilities had an overall star rating of 3 or less. The overall star rating for the VA’s nursing homes compared to the 15,487 private sector nursing homes rated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that VA has a significantly lower percentage (34.1 percent lower) of one-star, or lowest rated, facilities than the rest of the nation.
The VA is extending their transparency beyond nursing home ratings by becoming the first hospital system in the nation to also report on hospital wait times, opioid prescription rates, chief executive travel, employee settlements and accountability actions.
