The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of our lives. For long term care providers, this has affected day-to-day operations in a way that could almost never have been imagined. “Care over paper” is the trend today however from a regulatory perspective as well as a liability perspective, it is critically important that we maintain accurate, timely documentation on what …
Good, bad or indifferent, CMS is changing the MDS effective October 2020! Surprisingly, there will no longer be a section G in OBRA and PPS assessments and will only appear on the Optional State Assessment (OSA). There are tons of questions regarding how this will impact how we document functional status. The limited coding instructions imply we will eliminate the …
HealthCap® worked with AHCA/NCAL last fall to analyze what Argentum’s push for developing ANSI standards would mean for the industry. We found that national standards would be redundant to state licensing oversight and accompanying standards, which would confuse and complicate compliance. Furthermore, two sets of standards would fuel even more litigation, as trial attorneys will be able to hand-pick between …
With the implementation of PDPM in SNFs, questions, concerns and job security are being discussed by skilled therapists and rightfully so! In this article from AOTA, PDPM concerns are discussed along with responses to questions regarding facility operations/protocols. Using PDPM as the “reason” for downsizing your therapy department does not make the process of implementing PDPM easier and in fact …
Social media is a huge area of risk for providers and as such should be an important part of your QAPI committee discussions. Identifying your “social media footprint” is one step in the process however a bigger concern is your employees use of social media and how it could impact your organization. We have all heard about the horrific pictures …
Although long-term care providers have been required to perform criminal background checks for many years, the national data base is not accessible to providers. In a recent article published in Provider Magazine, Mark Parkinson, CEO of AHCA/NCAL and David Gifford, MD, Senior Vice President of Quality and Regulatory Affairs at AHCA discussed a recent OIG report on the effectiveness of …
The OIG is inspecting nursing facilities to identify whether they are in compliance with the Life Safety Code and Disaster Preparedness. In this article, the OIG discusses the 2016 updated life safety and emergency preparedness regulations aimed at improving care. The OIG made the decision to visit nursing facilities to ensure compliance with the regulations. The visits were conducted in …
CMS recently blogged about their five-part approach they are using to ensure safety and quality in America’s nursing homes. The approach is: Strengthen Oversight Enhance Enforcement Increase Transparency Improve Quality Put Patients over Paperwork Seema Verma, Administrator, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wrote about the first strategy, Strengthen Oversight, in a recent blog post.
After litigation and multiple comment periods from the public, the new CMS rule for arbitration agreements went into effect on September 16th. The rule only applies to arbitration agreements entered into on or after September 16th. Providers should take note of key requirements to ensure that their arbitration agreement will be enforceable. While it was a recommended best practice prior …
A study conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified that citations for abuse have more than doubled—from 430 in 2013 to 875 in 2017 and abuse deficiencies cited in 2017 were more likely to be categorized at the highest levels of severity (deficiencies causing actual harm to residents or putting residents in immediate jeopardy)—than they were in 2013. The …
