Feds Watching Cheyenne HealthCare Center

Cheyenne HealthCare Center in Cheyenne has been listed as one of 88 nursing care facilities across the country designated as a "Special Focus Facility" by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS].

According to the CMS, the listing includes facilities "that (a) have had a history of serious quality issues and (b) are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care."

Only 0.6 percent fo the over 15,000 nursing homes in the U.S. are put on the Special Focus Facilities list which means the CMS is closely monitoring them. The list is updated monthly.

You can read about the Special Focus Facility program here. A call to Cheyenne Health Care Center for comment was not immediately returned on Monday. The last list does include Cheyenne Health Care Center in the "improving" category, meaning that if continued progress is made it may eventually "graduate" from the SFF list.

The Special Focus Facility program was created in 1998 as part of an effort to improve nursing care facilities that were performing poorly on regulatory evaluations. Facilities on the list are inspected twice as often as other nursing care facilities and are being closely monitored, according to the CMS.

You can see a Medicare review of Cheyenne HealthCare Center here.

While Cheyenne HealthCare was the only Wyoming Nursing Home placed on the SFF List, 5 other facilities in the Cowboy State were listed as ''SFF Candidates, which is the next most serious level of regulatory concern. Those 5 included Shepherd of the Valley Rehabilitation and Wellness in Casper, Westward Heights Care Center in Lander, Sheridan Manor in Sheridan, Wyoming Retirement Center in Basin, and Thermopolis Rehabilitation  And Wellness in Thermopolis.

About 400 facilities across the country of the over 15,000 nursing homes are listed as SFF Candidates, according to the CMS.