Gillibrand, Colleagues Sound Alarm On Trump Administration Plan To Cut Nursing Home Inspections, Putting Over 114,000 Residents At Risk

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), ranking member of the Special Committee on Aging, pressed the Trump administration about concerns regarding the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) newly implemented Risk-Based Survey (RBS) program. This policy limits the number and scope of required federal and state inspections, putting an estimated 114,300 nursing home residents in nearly 1,700 facilities at risk. CMS recently released the full list of the nursing homes that will be subjected to shorter, less rigorous reviews and inspections.

Senator Gillibrand, along with Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), sounded the alarm about the risks of weakening inspections in a letter to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz.

“Nursing home residents depend on comprehensive, thorough, and unannounced surveys to detect and prevent substandard care that puts their health at risk,” said Senator Gillibrand. “By weakening oversight and allowing watered-down inspections, the Trump administration is putting nursing home residents at greater risk of mistreatment, neglect, and abuse. Our seniors deserve better. As the top Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee, I am working to promote safety and quality in nursing homes across New York to ensure residents receive the care they need.”

The senators’ letter highlighted a new analysis by Consumer Voice, which showed that the criteria CMS uses to identify lower-risk facilities eligible for reduced scrutiny do not reliably reflect high-quality care. For example, Consumer Voice found that dozens of homes on the reduced survey list have had a resident abuse tag or icon on the CMS Care Compare website since September 2025 and that about half of the newly RBS-eligible nursing homes would not have been eligible a year ago — indicating that, at best, they have a very limited record of providing high-quality services.

“CMS has adopted the RBS against a broader backdrop of rolled-back nursing home standards, including the elimination of new minimum staffing standards and delays to nursing home financial transparency requirements. These actions already place nursing home residents at risk — and the new policy of limited surveys will only make matters worse,” the senators wrote in the letter.

Gillibrand and her colleagues requested that CMS release information on whether the RBS adequately protects nursing home residents and follows federal statutory requirements by November 9, 2026.

The full text of the letter can be found here.