New SNF Reports Now Available in LeadingAge Report Portal
New Five Star Reports are now available for nursing home members in the LeadingAge Report Portal. These reports are based on the June 24 update to Nursing Home Care Compare. As this is only a monthly update, rather than a quarterly refresh, providers may see a change in their Health Inspection scores but Staffing and Quality Measures will not change. LeadingAge members can access their reports on the LeadingAge Report Portal. The next quarterly refresh of the Five Star Quality Rating System will occur on July 29.
Workforce- Haiti TPS
Several LeadingAge members have asked what they should be doing now that the Supreme Court has issued a decision on Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Employers should expect further guidance from DHS on this topic and should take no action based solely on the Court’s decision. Members are encouraged to identify employees who could be affected by the decision to and to monitor USCIS’ I-9 Central and Temporary Protected Status Designated Country: Haiti. Individual TPS holders may have other immigration and employment authorization pathways — adjustment of status, pending petitions, family-based options — but those are case-specific. Affected employees should be encouraged to consult with qualified immigration counsel as soon as possible.
LeadingAge Comments to ONC on Requiring Enhanced and Accurate Lists (REAL) of Health Providers Act
On June 29, 2026, LeadingAge submitted comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), offering recommendations and highlighting concerns related to implementation of the Requiring Enhanced and Accurate Lists (REAL) of Health Providers Act. Our primary recommendation encourages CMS to use its existing provider databases such as Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOs) as a single source of truth and push that data out to Medicare Advantage (MA) plans for their directory updates rather than requiring providers to submit quarterly recertifications to MA plans. The full comment letter can be accessed here and an article will be available on June 30 on the LeadingAge website.
OIG Finds Errors in PBJ Reporting
An audit from the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that payroll-based journal (PBJ) reporting by nursing homes is not always accurate. In a report released June 18, OIG stated that nearly half of all sample items reviewed were not supported in accordance with federal requirements. Inaccuracies were due to a number of issues including reporting hours that were not worked; not reporting hours that were worked and paid for; reporting hours that were not paid; reporting hours that were unreportable including meal breaks, training and other hours when staff were not available to perform their primary role, and off-site hours; and reporting hours for which the nurses working were not properly licensed. OIG concluded that CMS’s processes were not effective in ensuring the accuracy of PBJ reporting and made four recommendations including recommendations to require PBJ auditors to verify whether nursing homes took corrective actions on findings from PBJ audits, educate nursing homes on updated guidance, and regularly communicate with nursing homes the trends identified through PBJ audits. Read the full report of findings and recommendations here.
