About Nursing Home Ownership

Why is it Important? Not-for-profit vs. For-profit Ownership

This is one of the 6 criteria used to rate the quality of nursing homes on this website-nursinghomenavigator.com

Recent research points to a correlation between nursing home ownership and quality of care provided. As with any research conclusions are often generalized and it’s not to say that for-profit-ownership always means poor quality or performing nursing home.

In the United States, two-thirds of nursing homes are investor-owned, for-profit businesses. But are they better than not-for-profit homes? The results of an analysis published in 2009 suggest that not-for-profit nursing homes, overall, may provide higher quality care.

A paper, published online in the British Medical Journal, examined 82 studies carried out in the United States and Canada from 1965 to 2003. Forty studies showed significantly better quality in not-for-profit homes and three showed the quality was better in for-profit homes. The remaining studies, however, had mixed results, which suggest wide variability among institutions.

Further analysis by the team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, suggested that non-profit homes did better in four important quality measures: more or higher quality staffing; lower rates of pressure ulcers; less use of physical restraints; and fewer deficiencies cited by regulatory agencies.

Nursing homes, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, vary substantially in their management styles, motivations and organizational behavior, the authors note. Thus, they wrote, the report is not a blanket judgment of all institutions. "Some for-profit institutions may provide excellent quality care, whereas some not-for-profit institutions may provide inferior quality care."

However, in the big picture, the analysis found that nursing home residents in the United States would receive 500,000 more hours of nursing care per day if all not-for-profit institutions provided all nursing home care.

Given the costs of nursing home care and the fears families have about the well-being of their loved ones, more research describing the qualities of superior nursing homes might be in order.