UPDATE Weekly

Make plans today to join your colleagues for the third annual NCHCFA Summer Symposium. The three-day event will be August 5-7, 2014 at the Embassy Suites Resort at Kingston Plantation, Myrtle Beach, SC. Call the Embassy Suites Resort at (800) 876-0010 to reserve your overnight room. Use group code “NHF” to identify yourself as a NC Health Care Facilities Association Convention attendee! To make your reservation on-line, visit http://tinyurl.com/2014symposiumreserve.

Please note that when our room block is full, rooms will be on a first come, first served basis at prevailing published rates. Please call the Association office at (919) 782-3827 with any questions. Brochures will be mailed to members in June!

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North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association is offering a train-the-trainer program utilizing FutureCare NC’s human patient simulator. Dr. Mandy Richards, DNP, RN will use a state of the art human patient simulator that displays real time patient diagnostics and disease symptomology. This seminar offers a one-time “train-the-trainer” human patient simulator session to member facilities and corporations. Simulation based learning curriculum helps train staff using scenarios ranging from SBAR communication practices, clinical skills and assessment enhancement to medication errors and pneumonia identification. The session is designed to highlight the benefits a facility may achieve through the use of human patient simulator learning which focuses on the interactions and communication among nursing teams.

This will be an all-day training. Facilities and corporations will be able to register teams with 3 or 4 members with a maximum of 60 seats available. Teams must, at a minimum, include a RN (the person identified as responsible with facility implementation), one Nurse Aide, and one LPN. These groupings may also be composed of teams assigned by multi-facility management.

This seminar will be offered in Raleigh on June 4th. To register, log onto our Web site http://www.NursingHomesNC.com and download the brochure and registration form. You may fax the registration to (919) 787-8418 or e-mail it to kareno@nchcfa.org.

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Combination facilities that offer Medicaid PCS will be impacted by a recently approved State Plan Amendment (SPA). The SPA allows eligible beneficiaries to receive services beyond the current 80 hour cap. In order to pay for this service expansion, the SPA also reduces the PCS rate.

Click here to view the originally submitted SPA. To access the official DMA notice which contains registration information for this Friday, May 23rd Webinar, click here.

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On Friday, May 16th, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued an S&C Memo outlining the procedures that a qualified facility may use to apply for a due date extension. Click here to access this memo.

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On Wednesday, June 4, at 1:30 to 3 PM ET, the Medicare Learning Network will be hosting an ICD-10 Coding Basics National Provider Call.

To Register go to MLN Connects™ Upcoming Calls. Space may be limited, register early.

HHS expects to release an interim final rule in the near future that will include a new compliance date that would require the use of ICD-10 beginning October 1, 2015.

During this MLN Connects™ National Provider Call, there will be a presentation on more ICD-10 coding basics along with updates from CMS. A question and answer session will follow the presentation.

Agenda:

• CMS updates, including the partial code freeze and 2015 code updates
• Why ICD-9-CM is being replaced with ICD-10-CM
• Benefits of ICD-10-CM
• Similarities and differences from ICD-9-CM
• Coding: Process of assigning a diagnosis code, 7th character, placeholder ‘x,’ excludes notes, unspecified codes, external cause of injury codes, type of encounter
• Documentation tips
• How to obtain answers to coding questions
• How to request modifications to ICD-10-CM

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The 65th Annual AHCA/NCAL Convention & Expo registration is NOW OPEN! Early Bird deadline is July 18th! This year’s convention will offer you the opportunity to deepen your professional knowledge, network with colleagues from across the country, spend time in the Expo Hall discovering new business solutions, and even rock out a little. This is the must-attend event for long term and post-acute care professionals. Register today and take advantage of the lowest registration rates available! Click here to register now!

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Teamwork is an undisputed asset for reducing nursing and medical errors, improving quality of patient care, resolving workload issues, and avoiding burnout. This text helps to foster the leadership expertise and partnerships that will facilitate the delivery of the highest-quality care. It’s based on the time-tested wisdom that leadership knowledge, skills and competencies gained by training a group of nurses in the same organization rather than a single nurse are much more likely to result in genuine organizational transformation. This is the only text available to focus in-depth on building and maintaining effective partnerships, motivating and developing others in the team, organizational analysis, strategizing, communicating, planning and managing change, measuring team and partnership effectiveness through metrics, and leveraging results within and outside of the organization.

To order, visit http://www.AHCApublications.org or call (800) 321-0343.

Product #8306
AHCA MEMBERS: $60.00

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Mobility and Safe Movement of the Elderly, Improving Your Skills to Prevent Injuries and Reduce Falls, by Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L., FOTA, Dementia Care & Training Specialist. This DVD was developed in conjunction with Wake Allied Health Education Center, Durham Technical Community College and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Office of Information Systems. The content is formatted in separate segments in order to customize the delivery of content to your learning objective. Handouts developed by Teepa may be reproduced and accompany each video. To order, contact Jan Williams at janw@nchcfa.org.

• $35.00 (tax and shipping included)

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Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s seniors are misusing prescription drugs, including narcotic painkillers, anxiety medications and other pharmaceuticals, for everything from joint pain to depression.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/20/seniors-addiction-prescription-drugs-painkillers/9277489

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In addition to Memorial Day, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas observe some form of remembrance for Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War. In several states, it’s the fourth Monday in April, to commemorate the official surrender of the Confederate Army to the Union side on April 26, 1865.

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