The latest hot new business management book is out and it says to keep as much information as possible away from the people you oversee — and don’t let them ask too many questions.

Sound like a winner to you? Of course not. 

Yet this is precisely the situation long-term care and many other healthcare providers find themselves in when it comes to their primary overseer and regulatory body, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And, if one wants to be honest, also with its parent body, the Department of Health and Human Services.

Under the administration that took office in January, there has been no one at CMS entrusted to hold public stakeholder and Open Door Forum conference calls, where new policy is discussed and clarified, and questions are entertained from the audience. Nor have many other inquiries been sought, yet alone input asked for from the regular Joe and Josephine.

And when it comes to media inquiries? OK, stop laughing. You know the even-worse answer when it comes to scribes hoping to better inform their professional audiences with up-to-date information from the bodies that govern them.

The new administration has made it a pride point to choke off communication in many avenues, something they can do in a singular way because let’s face it: They are the only game in town when it comes to so much of what they do.

Keep in mind, we’re not talking about torch-bearing citizens or even disgruntled picket-carriers making threats to get information. For the overwhelming majority involved, these are earnest healthcare providers and other stakeholders seeking the best way to serve patients and residents, and do it to regulators’ own liking.

They have suffered from the mystery concerning the flow of communication and call it a big problem.

So wouldn’t it make sense to welcome inquiries and offer more frequent, open advice? Apparently not.

There’s, no doubt, a good deal of politics mixed into the decision-making here. But before anyone starts painting political parties with a broad brush, keep in mind that the Open Door Forum conference call series was ushered in by Tom Scully when he was CMS administrator in the early aughts. A staunch Republican appointed by then-President George W. Bush, Scully made the forums one of the first new things he instituted. 

The stated goal was to create a means of letting sunshine into the rulemaking and regulatory processes, while also averting caregiving (and regulator, it must be noted) headaches down the road.

Sunshine, after all, is the best disinfectant in governmental affairs, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis first put it back in 1913. (He, too, was a Republican — at least until 1912, four years before he started a vaunted 20-year term as a High Court appointee of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)

The current blackout (which it was at least initially), freeze or whatever you want to call this withholding of information by public servants is shortsighted. It also includes the disappearance of sector stakeholder calls and a distinct slowdown or elimination of many memos or other informational products.

Then again, I also don’t agree with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to eliminate public comment periods for proposals. I just can’t get that phrase “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” out of my mind. 

You have to wonder whether the guy who famously wrote and said that — Republican President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address — knew the line would still be such a pertinent topic of conversation 162 years later. 

Let’s hope it makes it to 163.

James M. Berklan is McKnight’s Long-Term Care News’ Executive Editor and a winner in the Best Commentary category in the 2024 Neal Awards, which are given annually for the nation’s best specialized business journalism.

Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.