Washington Skilled Nursing - Market Intelligence

3G Healthcare Real Estate is a sell-side advisory firm working only in skilled nursing facility real estate. This report is the Washington ownership and operating picture as we track it, drawn from CMS Provider Information, federal ownership filings, county property records, published Medicaid rate files, and our own resolution work.

Every figure below describes the market in aggregate; nothing here is specific to any single owner or property.

Washington carries a median Medicaid daily rate of $368 across 158 rated facilities, 82 percent of the buildings we track in the state, with the middle half of the market between $347 and $400 a day. The distribution is tight, which usually means a cost-capped methodology holding most buildings in a band. Non-profit buildings run $81 a day above government ones ($420 against $339 at the median), a gap that reflects the class each sits in rather than the quality of the building. Rates are effective July 2026.

Washington skilled nursing is 79 percent for-profit by facility count: 153 of 193 buildings, averaging 3.06 stars overall and 3.44 on staffing. The balance is 29 non-profit, 11 government. Non-Profit buildings rate highest at 3.90 stars and for-profit lowest at 3.06. Ownership type as CMS records it describes the license holder. The real estate behind it is frequently a different party, and that is the layer we resolve.

Washington averages 3.23 stars overall across 193 facilities and 18,781 licensed beds. Average occupancy runs 78 percent, which is the number that decides whether a building services its debt. Quality splits at the bottom: 69 facilities (36 percent) rate one or two stars overall, 25 of them one star. Special Focus status or candidacy covers 6 of them. CMS fines on the current record total $10.4M across 118 facilities. Total nurse turnover averages 45.4 percent. Counting any facility that carries at least one of a one- or two-star overall rating, Special Focus status or candidacy, CMS fines on the current record, or a distressed-title flag from county records, 129 of 193 buildings show a distress signal, 67 percent of the total.

The eight largest operating groups run 99 of Washington's 193 skilled nursing facilities, 51 percent of the state and 53 percent of its licensed beds. The remaining 94 buildings are spread across a long tail of smaller operators and independents.

Operating scale is not the same as real-estate ownership, and in most markets the two are separate. The property behind these portfolios is held across a far larger and more fragmented set of owners, many of them holding a single building outright. That is the layer we resolve, and it is why a market that looks consolidated from the operating side is usually anything but from the ownership side.

Washington's 45 reporting hospitals discharged at least 33,780 traditional-Medicare inpatients in the diagnosis groups that most often need skilled care afterward, in federal fiscal 2024. Sepsis leads at 12,208 discharges. Every one of these patients needed a next setting, and the facilities positioned closest to the highest-volume hospitals see that demand first.

117 of Washington's 182 graded skilled nursing facilities (64%) are taking a live Medicare payment cut this federal fiscal year under CMS's SNF Value-Based Purchasing program, which blends readmissions, infections, staffing and turnover into one multiplier and applies it to every Medicare day a building bills. The graded set averages a 0.3% cut across the whole state. A federal number like that says little read alone, which is why we check it against the fuller financial and operational record we hold on every building before it reaches a report: the buildings already under pressure elsewhere are the ones a payment cut actually threatens.

Medicare Advantage now covers 49.9% of Washington's Medicare population, as of April 2026. That is up 4.8 points in three years. Cowlitz County runs highest in the state at 67.8%. An MA member typically draws fewer skilled-nursing days per admission than traditional Medicare, so the counties at the top of that list are the ones structurally losing SNF days first, whatever the raw discharge count says.

Beds concentrate where the population does: King County with 47 facilities and 5,097 beds, Pierce County with 21 facilities and 2,333 beds, Snohomish County with 17 facilities and 1,607 beds.

1. CMS Provider Information / Care Compare: facility counts, licensed beds, occupancy, Five-Star ratings, staffing, nurse turnover, fines and Special Focus status, processed 2026-07-01.
2. CMS Payroll-Based Journal: nurse staffing hours and turnover.
3. Federal ownership filings: PECOS Form 855A indirect-owner tree and HCRIS cost-report related parties.
4. County property and mortgage records via the 3G real-estate-ownership resolution layer.
5. 3G Healthcare Real Estate proprietary warehouse, resolved as of the date shown above.
6. Washington published Medicaid nursing-facility rate files: 158 rated facilities, effective July 2026. A further 7 facilities are excluded from the rate figures: the published file carries conflicting rates against those buildings on the same effective date, so we report no rate rather than pick one.
7. State and federal legislative and regulatory tracking via the 3G intelligence scan, with the source for each item linked in that section.
8. CMS Medicare inpatient claims (fiscal 2024): hospital discharge volumes by diagnosis group, traditional Medicare only; CMS withholds lines under 11 discharges, so volumes are minimums. Readmission rates from CMS Care Compare's three-year measure window.
9. CMS SNF Value-Based Purchasing facility-level file, FY2026 determination (published February 2026): readmission, infection, staffing and turnover measures rolled into one Medicare payment multiplier per facility.
10. CMS Medicare Monthly Enrollment: Medicare Advantage penetration by county, April 2026.