UPDATE Weekly

Not for Profit organizations, especially trade associations, rely heavily on the volunteer time of its membership. One important way to make a difference is by serving on one of NCHCFA’s committees. Members have until April 15th to volunteer to serve on one of the following committees: Standards and Ethics, Provider Relations, Education and Programs, Quality Advisory, and Payment for Services. Click here [Word] [PDF] for a description of the committees. Click here [Word] [PDF] to download form and print. Click here to access the on-line entry version.

All committee assignments are for a two-year term beginning at the time of appointment and ending February 28, 2018. Appointments are made by the Chair of NCHCFA’s Board of Directors. Only representatives from member facilities in good standing are eligible to serve. Please note that all committee meetings will be conducted by conference call (excluding Education and Programs) unless circumstances arise that require an in-person meeting. When submitting your request, please choose more than one committee and rank selections in order of preference.

Members currently on committees will need to go through the sign-up process.

If you volunteer to serve on a committee, please make the commitment to participate. We promise to be respectful of your time and busy schedules. If you submitted this form during convention, we ask that you please complete and turn in again.

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On Friday March 18, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released an S&C memo entitled Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) – Implementation of required electronic submission of Staffing Data for Long Term Care (LTC) Facilities. The memo reminds providers of the mandatory submission period beginning July 1, 2016. Further, the memo notes CMS may use its enforcement authority for noncompliance with the requirement to submit data. The memo also states “The contents of this letter supports activities or actions to improve resident safety and increase quality and reliability of care for better outcomes.”

Although the bulk of the memo reiterates information that CMS has already distributed or that appears on their Payroll Based Journal Web site, there is a paragraph about enforcement. Of greatest interest are the following two sentences: “As providers are adjusting to this new requirement, we may refrain from imposing enforcement remedies (e.g., for good faith efforts). Additionally, we will provide feedback mechanisms to providers, such as warnings, that will help facilitate compliance with this requirement.”

Finally, they reference the updated and “final” version of the Payroll Based Journal policy that was added to their Web site last week.

Click here to access the S&C memo.

The American Health Care Association also has resources available to help providers with this new requirement. Click here to access these resources.

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On March 3, CMS announced the addition of new quality measures (QMs) to Nursing Home Compare (NHC) and the Five-Star Quality Rating System. The new measures are a part of the agency’s effort to track and encourage improvements in skilled nursing care centers for short-stay and long-stay patients and residents. These new additions also build on what CMS announced in February of 2015.

There are six new measures: four short-stay and two long-stay. The new short-stay measures are discharge back to the community, emergency room use, rehospitalizations, and improvement in function. Three of the four are aligned with the AHCA Quality Initiative. The new long-stay measures are decline in mobility and the use of hypnotics/anxiolytics.

What does this mean for American Health Care Association (AHCA) member centers? By the end of April, all six of the new measures will be added to NHC and accessible to the public. And in July, all but one measure – hypnotics/anxiolytics – will be added to Five-Star. CMS has not yet announced how the new QMs will impact the overall star rating.

AHCA hosted a Webinar for members on March 4 that walked through these new updates in greater detail. The recorded presentation, along with more specifics on the new measures, are available only to members on the Five-Star ahcancalED page here.

What can members do over the next few weeks to prepare for the addition of the new measures in April and in July?

1. Register for free to access members-only Five-Star resources on ahcancalED. Current resources include the March 4th AHCA Webinar, the questions and answers from that Webinar, and specifics on the new measurements. To access the resources on the site, you must 1) log in using your AHCA username and password and 2) register to download the Five-Star materials. Contact educate@ahca.org if you need any assistance.
2. Watch AHCA’s Webinar from March 4 if you have not already done so. Consider holding an all-staff meeting to watch the Webinar together.
3. Be sure your MDS coordinator is aware of the new updates. She/he will be able to access the QIES System one week before the new measures are added to NHC in April.
4. Start counting and tracking the number of residents and patients who are experiencing each of the QMs (e.g., discharge back to the community, emergency room use, rehospitalizations) by using Advancing Excellence’s free tracking tools.
5. Review and familiarize yourself with the specifics of the new measures. And don’t forget to include your staff in this process.
6. Go to AHCA’s LTC Trend Tracker(SM), a free, members-only online tool, to run your Discharge to Community and Hospitalization Rate reports. Once you have your report, look to see if you are above or below the national average to get a sense of how you are doing. Based on what you learn, set a goal to perform at least two-three points better than the average. Contact help@ltctrendtracker.com if you need any assistance.
7. Visit the AHCA Quality Initiative Website to access additional resources to improve your discharges back to the community and reduce hospital readmissions.
8. Stay tuned. AHCA will inform members of any new updates over the next few weeks.

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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 Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (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 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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The memo and materials emphasize “The Exit Conference during the onsite survey is both a courtesy to the provider and a way to expedite the provider’s planning ahead of the formal receipt of the survey findings in the Form CMS-2567, State of Deficiencies.” Specific tags are not to be provided and any discussion of possible areas of deficiency must include a statement that this is preliminary information and may change. The surveyors may not, under any circumstances, provide the scope and severity of a deficiency finding unless it is an immediate jeopardy.

The memo also states: “For Life Safety Code (LSC) surveys, the survey team may follow procedures for either non-LTC or LTC, depending on the degree to which, in the judgment of the team, the tag codes are important in helping the provider/supplier to understand the nature and location of the deficiency, and the corrective actions that would be necessary.”

Finally, the memo specifies “States are not permitted to have blanket policies that differ from the policy described in this section. For example, States may not require surveyors to always provide certain information during the Exit conference.”

Click here to access the S&C memo.

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New Publication Available: Hospitality For Boomers – AHCA is excited to announce this highly informative resource is now part of their inventory. Start improving your community reputation, marketability, and profitability today with Hospitality for Boomers: How to attract residents, retain staff, and maximize profitability. Written by former restaurateur, health-care food service director, and current national Kind Dining® service trainer, Cindy Heilman, this quick read shares a unique service perspective and is full of hospitality tips.

Learn how to:

• Respect your diner’s experience
• Train your staff to excel
• Apply empathy daily
• Exceed your residents’ expectations
• Build your hospitality team
• Grow your employees personally and professionally
• Focus your leadership team
• And more!

To order, visit http://www.AHCApublications.org or call (800) 321-0343. Fax orders may also be placed at (800) 869-5605.

Product #: 8274
Price: $19.95

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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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Fortifying A Foundation – A values-based work environment increases a facility’s success

http://www.providermagazine.com/columns/Pages/2015/Fortifying-A-Foundation.aspx

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Researchers report that nepetalactone, the essential oil in catnip that gives the plant its characteristic odor, is about ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET,the compound used in most commercial insect repellents.

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