OnShift’s Five-Star Staffing Guide (Everything You Need To Know)

Since 2008, potential residents and their families, hospitals, healthcare providers and other referral sources have relied on The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Five-Star Quality Rating system to evaluate and compare communities. And while there are a number of factors that come in to play when calculating a community’s overall quality rating, staffing is often the one that gets the most attention.

Research completed by CMS has found a strong relationship between staffing levels and the quality of resident outcomes. As staffing levels increase, so does quality. In turn, when staffing levels decrease, the level of care and service residents receive is often negatively impacted.

The way Five-Star Quality Ratings and, more specifically, how a community’s Five-Star staffing rating is calculated, is constantly evolving. The latest big change? The use of Payroll-Based Journal data as the one source of truth on daily staffing levels.

But the changes don’t stop there. Rules around meal break deductions, RN staffing requirements and more have all changed just in this past year alone.

Download our Five-Star Staffing Guide (July Edition) for an everything you need to know look at the latest updates on all things Five-Star staffing from CMS. And, as a bonus, we’ll send you our Staffing For Success (And Stars) Cheat Sheet with a breakdown of the latest daily workforce management best practices senior care providers need to meet their staffing (and star!) goals.