Virginia’s most profitable nursing homes – also some of the worst?

A little reminder: For profit healthcare is a thing in the United States. Tylenol makes money for Johnson & Johnson. Pfizer made billions on Zoloft before generic forms became available in 2006.  Your neurosurgeon may get a bonus this year, if he or she performs high dollar surgeries on patients or exceeds their RVUs. 

Healthcare and profit are linked in very direct and apparent ways in the United States. 

And we as a society, have been ok with this for decades. We believe, naively I would argue, that a company can put people (patients) over profit, and good care, safe products and safe facilities will result in for-profit healthcare systems.

In fact, Virginia Business magazine just published a list of the most profitable nursing homes. The list included 2015 facilities, and was ranked according to profit per patient. Net revenue.

So I was curious – were the top producers in patient revenue, also providing the best care? Did they also hire the most nurses to provide this care, or is it possible that profits were the goal, over people and patient care?

I won’t make any logical leaps here, or provide my opinion as to whether higher profits mean bad patient care, but I will share a few other statistics.

Most of these high profit facilities, are low quality care according to Medicare inspections and measurements.

Most of these high profit facilities, are below average in the care they give. Not all. See below, a few manage to make money and provide quality care according to state and federal investigators. 

Hmm… so while we applaud their ability to make a buck, shouldn’t we be upset that they did so at the expense of the patients and their families who trusted them with 24 hours a day care?

I’ll let you decide. 

*claims to be non profit – so why so much profit? Why not hire more nurses?