The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report entitled "Long-Term Care Hospitals: CMS Oversight Is Limited and Should Be Strengthened," which examines the extent to which CMS (1) collects data about LTCHs’ quality of care and (2) oversees LTCH survey activities. The GAO discusses the limitations of CMS data on LTCH quality, including the unavailability of detailed results of certain surveys performed prior to 2009, misidentified or missing LTCHs in CMS databases, and the lack of data on quality measures (note that the ACA requires LTCHs to report quality measures by 2014). The GAO also reviews ways in which CMS’s oversight of surveying activities related to LTCHs is limited, including shortcomings in CMS’s approach to validation surveys. The GAO recommends that CMS strengthen its oversight of LTCHs by taking a series of steps to improve available data on quality of care (such as by enhancing the accuracy of databases that track LTCH quality of care and promoting the sharing of complaint validation survey results) and improve oversight of LTCH survey activities (including conducting traditional validation surveys at a sample of LTCHs each fiscal year and holding survey organizations accountable for conducting surveys consistent with CMS requirements for evaluating the quality of care provided by LTCHs). In its response to the GAO report, CMS indicated that it concurred with all five recommendations made by the GAO. Among other things, CMS indicated that it intends to work with regional offices to clarify the policy for triaging complaint surveys at accredited LTCHs and for referring certain complaints to the appropriate accrediting organization.