Let’s have a little fun exploring the notion of full disclosure.

Wednesday’s Butler Eagle included an Associated Press report with the headline “Pa. nursing homes receive bad marks from national group.”

The article was about an advocacy group, Families For Better Care (FFBC), giving Pennsylvania nursing homes an overall F-grade, based on eight measures collected by the federal government. These measures, according to FFBC, included the number of problems found during government inspections, staffing levels and the number of verified complaints.

Nursing home industry spokesmen did their best to explain away the bad grade.

Zach Shamberg, CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association, said the report card is based on 2017 data, implying it’s already outdated. He said many of the issues cited by FFBC were resolved long ago.

Nate Wardle, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said the failing grade might be a sign that Pennsylvania conducts more and tougher inspections on nursing homes than other states do, since there’s no state-to-state standard for frequency of inspections or remediation of findings.

Hm, that’s a compelling notion. Is it possible the data compiled for this report might be penalizing some competitors for setting higher standards? If so, then the report might be misleading. What would be FFBC’s motivation for misleading the public?

This is how Sunshine State News, an online magazine, described Families for Better Care and its founder/president, Brian Lee, in a 2014 article: “For eight years he headed Florida’s long-term-care ombudsman program. Now his critics insist he’s whipping up business for one of the state’s busiest nursing home litigators. They say Brian Lee finds disgruntled patients, then Tampa personal injury attorney Jim Wilkes sues the living bedsheets out of their nursing homes.

And who is Jim Wilkes? Founding partner of the Tampa law firm Wilkes & McHough, his firm represented Dorothy L. Brace. One year ago a Pennsylvania jury awarded $7.5 million in compensatory damages to the family of Brace, an 86-year-old nursing home resident who was sexually assaulted by another resident at the nursing home, who was a known Megan’s Law sex offender.

Wilkes’ website, wilkesmchugh.com claims more than $1.5 billion in civil damages awarded to his clients, who happen to include former Democratic Party Sens. Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy.

The Sunshine State News describes Wilkes a little less glowingly: “Wilkes has made a living suing nursing homes on behalf of Medicaid and Medicare clients who have died or been injured because he claimed he could prove they received negligent care.” It’s a good living, too. In February, the 68-year-old Wilkes put up for sale his South Tampa home. Asking price: $11 million.

None of this information should imply that anything improper was done; no rules were broken. By the same token, when a nonprofit advocacy organization is funded and supported by a legal firm that profits from the advocates’ message, it should be a point of full disclosure.

Dorothy Brace, the nursing home resident who was victimized, deserved justice, and the administrators who neglected her maltreatment deserved punishment. There is no denying it.

By the same token, the public should be made fully aware of advocacy groups and should demand an accounting of their funding sources. To know the true motive, see who’s paying.