The Government Accountability Office published a study in July of 2011, reviewing complaints that for-profit nursing homes provided poor quality care. Many of these claims focused on the growing trend of private investment (PI) firms purchasing large nursing home chains with a focus on monetary output instead of quality of care.
The study compared these PI held homes with other for-profit and nonprofit homes. Results supported other research findings that higher rates of serious deficiencies were present in PI held homes. PI homes also reported lower nurse staff ratios.
The Health Services study corroborates these reports, finding top for-profit nursing homes provide "lower staffing and higher deficiencies than government facilities." The level of nursing staff is repeatedly linked to "quality of care, affecting such measures as the number of resident pressure ulcers, resident functional status, mortality rates and number of regulation violations."
Lower labor costs are used to increase profit. These nursing chains are debt financed and pressured by shareholders and investors to turn a profit, fueling the growing endemic of poor-quality care for the elderly. Specifically, the top ten for-profit homes received 36 percent higher deficiency citations and 41 percent higher serious deficiencies. These deficiencies are issued whenever a facility violates regulations that can lead to injury.