It’s been a big week for long-term care - President Barack Obama signed the IMPACT Act, AHCA held its annual convention in Washington, D.C., and changes were made to the Five Star rating system for nursing homes. Everyone is buzzing about these new changes, and rightly so.
On October 6th, CMS announced two quality improvement initiatives related to the Nursing Home Five Star System and Home Health Conditions of Participation. The improvements to the Five Star rating system should make it more transparent and hopefully a better indicator of quality than it has been in the past.
Providers should take a quick read of the announcement here because it covers 6 areas that are important to you:
- Nationwide Focused Survey Inspections
- Payroll-Based Staffing Reporting
- Additional Quality Measures
- Timely and Complete Inspection Data
- Improved Scoring Methodology
- Home Health Conditions of Participation change
The good news is that CMS is continuing to focus on patient outcomes through better means of data collection. They are moving to a quarterly electronic reporting system that is auditable back to payrolls to verify staffing information, meaning that it’s more important than ever to stop relying on paper for your staffing practices. They haven’t released any details about what that system is or contains, but my guess is it’s a replacement for CMS form 671 – the paper form used today to drive your Five Star staffing rating. We will see what they come up with.
This seems to be another stake in the ground against paper record keeping and all the more reason to ensure staffing information is kept up to date in an electronic system. So while we wait for more details from CMS, take some time to learn about how OnShift’s capabilities help providers get off those paper schedules and go online. This is quickly becoming an expectation, from both CMS and your employees.
