UPDATE Weekly

Register today for the NCHCFA Annual Convention and Trade Show, The Art of Caring, February 21-24, 2016 at the Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons/Joseph S. Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, NC! Don’t miss the opportunity to earn up to 15.5 hours of educational credit for North Carolina Nursing Home Administrators, as well as up to 14.5 hours of Nursing CE credit! The advanced registration deadline is Friday, February 5th. To register or obtain an additional brochure visit the Member Center of the Association’s Web site at http://www.NursingHomesNC.com.

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.

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If you’re attending the NCHCFA Annual Convention & Expo, we are pleased to offer a multi-functional Convention App for this year’s event. With the NCHCFA Convention & Expo App you can:

• View the convention agenda
• View exhibitor information
• View attendee list
• Receive alerts & updates for the meeting
• Upload pictures from the event
• Participate in live polls
• Download session presentations
• View all important convention information
• Communicate with other attendees via the News Feed

All registered attendees will receive an e-mail with download instructions the week prior to the event! Instructions will also be included in the attendee notebooks!

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As of January 27, 2016, Long-term Care (LTC) Nursing Facility providers are required to enter all prior approval (PA) requests through the NCTracks Provider Portal. Fax and mail are no longer options to submit a completed FL2 to be entered into NCTracks. If an FL2 form is submitted by fax or mail, a reject letter will be posted to the Message Center Inbox of the Office Administrator for the NPI and no PA will be created in the system.

When entering a LTC Nursing Facility prior approval request using the NCTracks Provider Portal for a recipient that is pending eligibility, you must include the recipient’s address with the other required demographic information. This is a required field when keying the FL2 PA request into the Provider Portal.

For more information on prior approval, see the NCTracks Web site.

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Election of officers and members of the Board of Directors will be conducted on Monday, February 22nd, during NCHCFA’s Business Meeting. The business meeting will be held in conjunction with NCHCFA’s 2016 annual Convention in Greensboro. All persons seeking an office or a position on the Board of Directors should have their name submitted to the Nominating Committee by Friday, February 12th. The nomination must be submitted in writing or e-mailed and include the candidate’s full name, the office being sought and the facility or company of employment. Please mail or e-mail the information to the attention of:

By Mail:

Nominating Committee
North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association
5109 Bur Oak Circle
Raleigh, NC 27612

By Email:

Karen Lennon, NCHCFA, karenl@nchcfa.org

Nominating Committee: David Kidder (Chair), Cheryl Clapp-Coleman and Kevin Cox.

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A revised Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Billing Reference Fact Sheet is available. Learn about SNF:

• Coverage
• Payment
• Billing requirements

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A revised Medicare Advance Beneficiary Notices Booklet is available. Learn about:

• Types of Advance Beneficiary Notices (ABNs)
• Prohibitions and frequency limits
• Completing the ABN
• Collecting payment from the beneficiary
• Financial liability and the ABN
• Claim reporting modifiers

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Beginning with the February 2, 2016 checkwrite, two new fields will be displayed on the paper Remittance Advice (RA) posted to the secure NCTracks Message Center Inbox:

* Medicare Co-Insurance Amount
* Medicare Paid Amount

These fields are being added to the RA to assist hospitals and skilled nursing facilities with submitting claims to Medicare for reimbursement of bad debt. This change will only affect the Institutional section of the RA. All other sections will remain the same.

The new Medicare Co-Insurance Amount and Medicare Paid Amount fields will be added to the RA only for claim types ‘A’ (Part A Institutional claims) and ‘U’ (Part B claims submitted on Institution claim forms.) For all other claim types reported under the Institutional section of the RA, the Medicare Co-Insurance Amount and Medicare Paid Amount field labels will be displayed with $0 amounts.

No modifications will be made to the 835 X12 transaction.

Also, to provide the additional information for past checkwrites, a one-time bad debt report will be generated and distributed to each nursing home provider and hospital for payment periods from July 1, 2013 through January 26, 2016. On February 8, the one-time report data file can be accessed by the provider using a link that will be posted to the secure Message Center Inbox. The link to the one-time report data file for a provider will be published to all the North Carolina Identities (NCIDs) associated with the NPI. The one-time report data file will be compatible to download into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

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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 Lisa Klemis. For more details, e-mail Jennifer Brock at Jennifer.Brock@area-F.hcqis.org or call (678) 527-3417.

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When you have to replace an RN, the average cost is one hundred thousand dollars. By the time you find the right candidate, hire, train, and help them become productive, it could cost 150% of their base salary. It’s a lot less expensive to keep the employees you have, especially in a competitive market!

• Gero Nurse Prep prepares RNs for successful attainment of board certification as Gerontological Nurses, the gold standard of excellence.
• Employer support for continuing education and board certification can increase RN job satisfaction.
• Satisfied, well-trained, and committed RNs provide better quality care.
• RN satisfaction and a supportive workplace are linked to decreased turnover rates.

In addition to staff retention, your support of certification is an investment in your center’s performance, reputation, and residents. To learn more about these and other benefits of the course please go to http://geronurseprep.org.

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A Special Medicaid Bulletin has been published on the DMA Web site. The bulletin contains important information regarding the requirement for attending, rendering, ordering, prescribing, and referring providers to be enrolled in NCTracks.

In addition, a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) regarding the enrollment of attending, rendering, ordering, prescribing, and referring providers has been posted under Quick Links on the Provider Enrollment page of the NCTracks Provider Portal.

Providers are encouraged to read both documents carefully to understand the implications to provider enrollment and claim billing for N.C. Medicaid and N.C. Health Choice.

To directly access the Special Medicaid Bulletin, click here.

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The North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association would like to thank our 2016 Gold Convention Hosts for supporting the upcoming Annual Convention & Expo – The Art of Caring. Be sure to visit them at the booths on Tuesday, February 23rd during Expo 2016 – The Art of Patriotism.

Blue Ridge Pharmacy – Booths 531 & 632
Healthcare Services Group – Booths 526 & 528
Legacy Consultant Pharmacy – Booth 520
Medipack Pharmacy – Booths 213 & 215
Neil Medical – Booths 301, 303, 400 & 402
NH Medical Services – Booths 417 & 516
PruittHealth – Booths 323, 325, 327, 329, 422, 424, 426 & 428
Southern Pharmacy – Booths 501 & 503

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With more than 100 activities and care plans for long term care residents, there’s an activity that suits each resident’s distinct needs, no matter what the clinical condition or cognitive limitation. Inside this book, you’ll find:

• Dozens of comprehensive activity plans for every type of resident
• Simple explanations of corresponding CMS regulations
• Chapters devoted to residents with unique activity needs, including Alzheimer’s and dementia residents, bariatric residents, short-term stay residents, non-ambulatory residents, and more.

Each activity provides concise and specific steps that will help make it a success. Several variations, adaptations, modifications, and hints for customizing the activity to your facility are also offered. Bonus CD-ROM included! Each of the activities, forms, and care plans found in this book can also be accessed on the companion CD-ROM. Take this CD-ROM with you to any location and provide your residents with meaningful activities to foster a higher quality of life.

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

Product # 8131
AHCA Members (on-line price) $129.00

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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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How Can We Prepare For A Graceful Death? Watch this moving TED talk on how a Zen hospice is “redesigning” death

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/29/464455068/how-can-we-prepare-for-a-graceful-death

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Although White House State dinners, barbecues for Congress, and holiday receptions for the diplomatic corps are paid for by taxpayers, the President is billed for all food consumed by his family and his personal guests.

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