UPDATE Weekly

Mark your calendar today for the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association’s “Assessment of Wounds and Pain Management/Best Practices in Long-Term Care.”

The topics are:

• Pain – The Fifth Vital Sign
• Assessment and Treatment of Vascular Disease and Ulceration
• Skin Care – A Guide for Wound Prevention and Long-Term Success

This program will be presented by Dr. Chuck Gokoo on March 26th, 2015 at the Embassy Suites Greensboro! Brochures were mailed to all facilities last week and were also included in the attendee notebooks during the 2015 Annual Convention and Expo last week in Greensboro. Online registration is available NOW by logging onto our Web site at http://www.NursingHomesNC.com and clicking on “Assessment of Wounds and Pain Management/Best Practices in Long-Term Care.” Don’t miss it!

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According to the Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 30, Section 40.1, providers and suppliers are responsible for knowing the rules and regulations that apply to all services billed by the provider to the Medicare program.

In accordance with regulations at 42 CFR 411.406, evidence that the provider, practitioner, or other supplier did, in fact, know or should have known that Medicare would not pay for a service or item includes:

A Medicare contractor’s prior written notice to the provider, practitioner, or other supplier of Medicare denial of payment for similar or reasonably comparable services or items;

• Medicare’s general notices to the medical community of Medicare payment denial of services and items under all or certain circumstances (such notices include, but are not limited to, manual instructions, bulletins, carriers’ written guides, and directives); and

• Provision of the services and items was inconsistent with acceptable standards of practice in the local medical community (refer to §40.1.3 and §40.1.4)

If any of the circumstances described above exists, a provider, practitioner or other supplier is held to have knowledge.

The provider is responsible to know the rules and regulations that are made available through publications from the Medicare carriers and fiscal intermediaries, which include, but are not limited to, the Medicare publications, articles and e-mail updated published on the Palmetto GBA Websites.

Other resources include:

• Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage (ABN), Form CMS-R-131
• Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 30, Section 40.1

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The Five Star reports have been updated in AHCA’s LTC Trend Tracker to reflect the recent CMS changes. These reports include the Five Star Overall, as well as the predictor reports – Five Star Quality Measure (QM) Report and Five Star Staffing Report. The Rating Predictor features allow users to see how potential changes can impact a center’s Five Star QM Rating and Staffing Rating.

Two Webinars will be offered AHCA for members interested in learning how to use the new reports. Please click on the dates below to register.

• March 26 – 2pm ET
• April 2 – 2pm ET

Login today at http://www.ltctrendtracker.com. Please e-mail help@ltctrendtracker.com with any questions or for additional assistance.

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Recruitment continues through March 31, 2015 for the upcoming Southern Partners Action Collaborative for Excellence facilitated by Alliant Quality. Currently, Alliant has recruited over 90 homes to begin work in April 2015.

Alliant thanks all who were able to stop by the Alliant Quality booth at the 2015 NCHCFA Convention and Expo where Alliant was able to provide Quality Measure data to all recruited homes. Alliant does have this QM data for each home in the state and are happy to provide this upon request. The data includes the following seven components:

1. Nursing Home Antipsychotic Data
2. Nursing Home Composite Score Data
3. Nursing Home Readmission Data
4. Pressure Ulcer Data
5. Restraint Data
6. Falls Data
7. ADLs Data

To learn more about the CMS National Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative, click here.

To learn more about the SPACE Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative – Southern Partners Action Collaborative for Excellence Benefits, Expectations, and Commitments, click here.

NCHCFA’s request of you at this time is to assist us in meeting this deliverable for 3/31/15. While many members have submitted their participation agreement, we ask those facilities to please share with corporate level executives, consultants and sister facilities and encourage them submit the completed participation agreement via e-mail or fax.

If you are ready to register, click here for the Participation Agreement and fax or e-mail back to Nancy Fendler as indicated. For more details, e-mail Nancy at nancy.fendler@alliantquality.org or reach her at 678-527-3679.

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The “Updated LEIE” database file reflects all OIG exclusion and reinstatement actions up to, and including, those taken in February 2014. This new, “Updated LEIE” (List of Excluded Individuals and Entities) is a complete database file containing all exclusions currently in effect. Individuals and entities that have been reinstated to the federal health care programs are not included in this file.

All the updated files are posted at http://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/exclusions_list.asp.

Instructional videos explaining how to use the on-line database and the downloadable files are available:

• On-line Database Video: http://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/online.asp.
• Downloadable Database Video: http://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/download.asp.

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!…..“Bring on the Fiesta!” is this year’s theme for National Nursing Home Week! Speak the language of Familia, Vida and Amor during National Nursing Home Week 2015! Imagine an event that brings the long-term care (LTC) community of residents, rehab patients, families and care center staff together for a weeklong festival in 2015. Think of all the fun your LTC community can have, which is precisely why the American Health Care Association (AHCA) will designate National Nursing Home Week (NNHW) as “Bring on the Fiesta!” week.

We call on everyone to strut their stuff this week. Make it a special time of entertainment and education for all while focusing on bringing to life the subtheme of “Familia, Vida and Amor” (family, life, love). Show how your care center, as part of culture change, brings these vital attributes of quality care to the forefront, irrespective of anyone’s age or physical or intellectual ability. Try to weave into your Fiesta a celebration of cultures, and how people of various backgrounds put on a Fiesta.

We see this as an opportunity to entice in new guests, infrequent visitors and local VIPs to realize and appreciate the importance of a kind word, a personal touch and being connected to the resident. Encourage visitors and younger volunteers to make time with loved ones a special event by putting aside the Smartphone along with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all other impersonal distractions in order to be part of the Fiesta and Familia, Vida, Amor.

So, BRING ON THE FIESTA! For all to enjoy the chance to whoop it up, enjoying the crowds, the activities, the comradery and the feelings engendered by Family, Life, Love (Familia, Vida, Amor).

Visit AHCA’s on-line store to view the colorful and fun product line for this special week! (Don’t wait until the last minute! National Nursing Home Week products are very popular and will sell out quickly!) National Nursing Home Week is May 10-17, 2015!

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The NC State Board of Examiners for Nursing Home Administrators will offer the 2015 Preceptor Seminars on April 20-21, 2015 and April 21-22, 2015 at the Kingston Plantation, Myrtle Beach, SC. You will need to choose the first seminar dates for Renewal Preceptor certification and the second seminar dates for Initial Preceptor Certification and Continuing Education Only. The seminars will be open to all nursing home administrators seeking continuing education credits and/or preceptor certification. This is the only Preceptor Seminar being planned for 2015 by the NC State Board of Examiners for Nursing Home Administrators.

Click here to download more information along with the registration form.

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You will learn the fundamentals of ICD-10 coding, what you can do today to manage the transition to ICD-10, and how to prepare for the impact on your daily operations. Complete with a chronological, step-by-step ICD-10 implementation action plan for your entire facility, this book is the perfect primer to get you where you need to be in order to survive and thrive under ICD-10.

ICD-10 Essentials for Long-Term Care will help you:

• Implement simple procedural changes immediately to ease the burden of the transition in future months
• Familiarize your coders with the ICD-10 format to ensure a smooth transition during implementation
• Develop timelines to train clinicians in new documentation requirements
• Achieve leadership buy-in for the necessary budget, policy changes, and infrastructure upgrade to accommodate ICD-10 requirements
• Execute a step-by-step action plan throughout your facility to ensure timely ICD-10 readiness

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

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This DVD, 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, 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 accompany each video and may be reproduced. To order, e-mail your request to Jan Williams at janw@nchcfa.org. The price is $35.00 (tax and shipping included).

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Change the approach of dementia care

http://www.mcknights.com/change-the-approach-of-dementia-care/article/402062/

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The six-pack carrier was an innovation developed by Coca-Cola in 1923. It was created to encourage people to take bottles of Coca-Cola home and drink it more often.

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