UPDATE Weekly

Each month, the Division of Medical Assistance publishes the Medicaid Bulletin with updates and announcements on items that impact Medicaid providers across the State. The latest issue includes articles on the recently approved state plan amendment that freezes nursing facility case-mix and removes the 3% rate reduction, ICD-10 and other items of interest. To view the current issue, as well as past issues, click here.

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On May 22, 2015 CMS issued an S&C Memo including a review of the nursing home survey and a summary of traditional and Quality Indicator Survey (QIS) findings and issues. The S&C memorandum is an “information only” transmittal and contains an attachment entitled “Assessment of the Nursing Home Survey Processes: Current Trends and Future Prospects for Survey Improvements”. Of note: CMS intends to incorporate complaint investigations into the QIS system this year.

The memo and review can be found at: http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Provider-Enrollment-and-Certification/SurveyCertificationGenInfo/Downloads/Survey-and-Cert-Letter-15-40.pdf

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Make plans today to join your colleagues for the fourth annual NCHCFA Summer Symposium. The three-day event will be August 26-28, 2015 at the Embassy Suites Resort at Kingston Plantation, Myrtle Beach, SC.

Do not miss TAKING THE HARDER RIGHT on Thursday, August 27th. This seminar is powerful and a unique way for corporations to educate fundamentally honest employees who were raised with moral and ethical values. It is easy to be moral and ethical when there are no pressures or circumstances to compel one to make difficult choices. This seminar will focus on a theme used at West Point to always strive to “take the harder right instead of the easier wrong” and will provide ways for individuals to cope with the pressures of life that can cloud judgment. Oliver Halle, a retired FBI Special Agent who is a lawyer and trained in teaching ethics, leads TAKING THE HARDER RIGHT seminar. Several convicted white-collar felons will participate as presenters, riveting the audience as they tell their stories. These “felons” could be your roommate, neighbor, congregant, colleague, or relative, and at some point in their career they took the “easier wrong” and altered the course of their lives forever.

To view the 2015 Schedule at a Glance click here!

Call the Embassy Suites Resort at (800) 876-0010 to reserve your overnight room. Use group code “HCF” to identify yourself as a NC Health Care Facilities Association Convention attendee! To make your reservation on-line, visit http://tinyurl.com/2015symposiumroomblock. 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 available soon!

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Mark your calendar today for the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association’s “ICD-10-CM Essentials for Long-Term Care” seminar. As you know, the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) code set will soon replace the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) code set used to report medical diagnoses and inpatient procedures through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standard transactions. Any provider covered by the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA), including most long-term and post-acute care organizations must implement ICD-10-CM by October 1, 2015. After that date, providers will not be able to use ICD-9-CM codes.

According to CMS, the new ICD-10-CM code set implementation will affect long-term and post- acute care providers in a number of ways:

• Nursing facility (NF) providers will need to align with the federal CMS guidelines for Minimum Data Set (MDS) submission.
• LTC providers will be required to submit ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes on all claims.
• Primary diagnosis codes will be required on the Long Term Care Medicaid Information (LTCMI) section of the MDS submitted on the LTC Online Portal.
• Community Services providers must be prepared to submit the Medical Necessity and Level of Care (MN/LOC) Assessment using the new ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes.

We offered this course last summer and felt it was necessary to have another! Mark your calendar for July 14th at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh, NC! Brochures with registration forms will be mailed to all facilities next week!

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As part of NCTracks preparations for the implementation of ICD-10, they are conducting a Provider Readiness Survey. This is the third iteration of the survey. The survey is being conducted several times between now and October 1 to help gauge the progress of the provider community.

You do not need to have taken the previous surveys to complete this one. All providers are welcome to complete this survey. The survey is brief, only 8 questions. Providers should be able to complete it in 5 minutes or less. The link to the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3KZ3WNB and it will be open until 6:00 p.m. Friday, June 5.

NCTracks would like you to know that all responses are anonymous and appreciated.

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We are excited about the number of nursing homes that have decided to participate in the Alliant Quality National Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative (NNHQCC). Alliant Quality would like to invite each of you to attend a brief (30-minute) SPACE- Kick-Off Session in June. If you have not already completed a participation agreement and do not want to be left out, please complete the agreement and return to nancy.fendler@alliantquality.org.

There are two opportunities, please click on the dates below to register.

Thursday, June 4, 2015:

• Quality Net Meeting Invite Participant June 4, 10:00 AM- 10:30 AM
• Quality Net Meeting Invite Participant June 4, 2:00 PM-2:30 PM

ABOUT ALLIANT QUALITY
Alliant Quality is the Medicare Quality Innovation Network (QIN)-Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for North Carolina. Under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Alliant Quality invites your nursing home to participate in a collaborative designed to ensure that every nursing home resident receives the highest quality of care. Specifically, the Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative (NNHQCC) will strive to instill quality and performance improvement practices, eliminate healthcare acquired conditions, and dramatically improve resident satisfaction.

The Collaborative offers an exciting opportunity to learn from high performing nursing homes regarding their processes as they pertain to consistent/permanent staff assignment, teamwork and communications, leadership, regulatory compliance, clinical models, and quality of life indicators. The Collaborative aligns national nursing home quality initiatives and partnerships such as the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign, The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, and Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI). Targeted focus areas will include increasing mobility, decreasing unnecessary use of antipsychotics in residents with dementia, decreasing potentially avoidable hospitalizations and decreasing healthcare acquired infections and conditions.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Participants in the Alliant Quality National Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative (NNHQCC) ~ Southern Partners Action Collaborative for Excellence (SPACE)

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

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Learn what it takes to effect real culture change within residential care settings while reducing the administration of psychotropic drugs in the symptomatic treatment of dementia. Dr. G. Allen Power, board-certified internist, geriatrician, nursing home practitioner, and Eden Alternative™ Educator, challenges all care providers working with individuals with dementia to undertake a true operational change. You will learn how to embrace more humanistic, enlightened practices that address the most common challenges in caring for people who live with dementia. Overcome communication challenges, minimize anxiety and depression, root out the causes of wandering, and gain insights into paranoia and delusions so that you can learn to treat individuals with dementia as the human beings that they are rather than letting their dementia define them.

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

Product # 8249
AHCA Members (on-line price) $32.95

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If you missed Upcoming Hospice Regulations seminar, the notebook/presentation is now available for purchase. To order, e-mail your request to Amy Suggs at amys@nchcfa.org. The cost is $25 plus tax and shipping.

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A humorous and heartwarming feature documentary, CYBER-SENIORS adds to the important international conversation about the growing generation gap. Focusing on a group of senior citizens who take their first steps into cyber-space the film renders a thought-provoking look at a spirited group of men and women enriched by digitally re-connecting with their families and each other.

http://cyberseniorsdocumentary.com

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Female bald eagles are 25% larger than males.

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