UPDATE Weekly

One of the benefits of being a member of the American Health Care Association (AHCA) is their daily e-mail publication, Provider Daily. Provider Daily is a daily compilation of state and national news designed to keep members abreast of developments impacting long term care professionals. To see recent on-line versions of Provider Daily, click here or click here.

Providers do not automatically receive Provider Daily, but can request to receive it by sending an e-mail request to Katherine Merullo at kmerullo@ahca.org.

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Drexdal Pratt, Director of the Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR), will be retiring effective December 31, 2015. He has served in this position for the past 5 ½ years. DHHS Secretary Brajer has appointed Mark Payne to lead the division following Drexdal Pratt’s retirement. Mr. Payne has served the past 2 ½ years as Chief of Staff for the Department. He spent the majority of his career as in-house counsel for several health insurers in North Carolina, including Kaiser Permanente, CIGNA Healthcare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina where he also served as Vice President of Ethics and Compliance. Mr. Payne will assume the role of Assistant Secretary for Audit and Health Service Regulation effective January 1, 2016.

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Expo 2016 will be held on Tuesday, February 23rd during the NCHCFA Annual Convention, February 21-24, 2016 at the Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons/Joseph S. Koury Convention Center. This is the 32nd consecutive year in which the NCHCFA trade show has sold-out!

It’s election season so we are rolling out the red, white, and blue carpet. This year’s trade show theme will be The Art of Patriotism. Visit all 170 booths of the 2016 Exposition for a star spangled celebration! Booths will be decorated in the spirit of America by honoring past Presidents, historical figures, national monuments or parks, famous American art, the Armed Services or anything that embodies American pride. Be sure to take your validation card to be eligible for the Grand Prize drawing to be held during the 2016 Annual Awards Gala. Before you turn it in, don’t forget to vote for your favorite company that best incorporates this year’s theme. Many other prizes from exhibitors will be awarded throughout the day. Keep in mind that winners must be in the exhibit hall to receive their prizes. For a relaxing break, a buffet lunch will be served from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm.

Reminder, call the Sheraton at (800) 242-6556 to make your room reservation. Identify that you are with “NC Health Care Facilities Association 2016 Convention” to receive the group discounted rate. Registration materials will be available soon!

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The American Health Care Association (AHCA) is pleased to announce the availability of a comprehensive new resource developed by AHCA members and other experts. The Professional Liability Toolkit: Solutions to Avoid Unnecessary and Expensive Litigation offers risk management, communication, legal and legislative strategies for providers facing negative advertising levied against their nursing or assisted living center. You may access the toolkit by clicking on the link or by visiting the Legal Resources section of the AHCA Website (https://www.ahcancal.org).

In today’s litigious environment, care centers are easy targets for lawsuits. Individuals have little to lose by taking legal action against nursing and assisted living centers because (in most instances) they do not pay attorneys up front and they do not have to pay court costs if they lose. Attorneys also fuel these lawsuits by publishing misleading advertisements about the centers in an effort to solicit new clients and collect a large portion of lucrative damage awards.

With the Board’s approval, AHCA created the Professional Liability Work Group, composed of members from the AHCA Boards, State Executives, CPAC, Regional Council, Independent Owners, Not-For-Profit Council and the Legal Committee. This Work Group spearheaded the development of the Professional Liability Toolkit to provide a roadmap for State Affiliate staff, members, and their legal counsel to fight back against the growing trend of frivolous lawsuits against care centers. It is critical that we curtail these legal actions, which only serve to distract providers from the important job of delivering quality care to their patients.

The Work Group’s effort to arm you with strategies to contend with aggressive attorneys and to avoid potential lawsuits is a model for future responses.

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Each month, the Division of Medical Assistance publishes the Medicaid Bulletin with information valuable to the Medicaid provider community. The December issue contains information on the 2016 checkwrite schedule, the NCTracks re-credentialing process, available NCTracks training, changes in the delivery of nursing facility rate letters and resident rosters, and other items that may be of value to your facility.

Due to a recent Web site redesign, the Medicaid Bulletins are now located at http://dma.ncdhhs.gov/document/2015-medicaid-bulletins. You can directly access the December issue by clicking here.

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Alliant Quality wants to encourage SNFs to keep signing up for the National Collaborative – or SPACE. Alliant recommends having as much time as possible to get started on QAPI improvement work and improving facility quality measures in a systems approach to improve their five star and composite scores.

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.

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.

When ready to register, click here for the Participation Agreement and fax or e-mail it back to Lis Klemis. For more details, e-mail Jennifer Brock at, Jennifer.Brock@area-F.hcqis.org or call (678) 527-3417.

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Electronic submission of staffing data through the Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) is required of all Long Term Care Facilities starting July 1, 2016. ALL nursing homes are encouraged to register to submit data to prepare to meet this requirement and maintain compliance.

Step 1: Obtain a CMSNet User ID for PBJ Individual, Corporate and Third Party users, if you don’t already have one for other QIES applications (https://www.qtso.com/cmsnet.html) (many users may already have this access for MDS submission).
• Step 2: Obtain a PBJ QIES Provider ID for CASPER Reporting and PBJ system access (https://mds.qiesnet.org/mds_home.html)
• Training: PBJ Training Modules for an introduction to the PBJ system and step by step registration instruction are available on QTSO e-University, select the PBJ option https://www.qtso.com/webex/qiesclasses.php. More information is available on the PBJ Website https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/NursingHomeQualityInits/Staffing-Data-Submission-PBJ.html.

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The List of Excluded Individuals and Entities has been updated to reflect the updates made in November 2015. This update includes a file with a CSV extension in addition to the TXT extension. If you experience any issues using the new files formats, please send a detailed description to leie.update@oig.hhs.gov.

LEIE Database

• 11-2015 Updated LEIE Database: EXE | ZIP
New File Formats: TXT | CSV

Current Monthly Supplements

• 11-2015 Exclusions: EXE | ZIP
New File Formats: TXT | CSV
• 11-2015 Reinstatements: EXE | ZIP
New File Formats: TXT | CSV

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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.

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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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 Donna Snyder at donnas@nchcfa.org. The price is $35.00 (tax and shipping included).

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Geriatric telehealth applications poised for growth in 2016

http://www.mcknights.com/news/geriatric-telehealth-applications-poised-for-growth-in-2016/article/458577/

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A Chinese law requires offspring of parents older than 60 to see that the parents’ daily, financial and spiritual needs are met.

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