UPDATE Weekly

Register today to attend the fifth annual NCHCFA Summer Symposium August 9-11, 2017 at the Embassy Suites Resort at Kingston Plantation, Myrtle Beach, SC for the most up to date information affecting long term care. You can register and pay on-line. Visit http://NursingHomesNC.com & click on Sixth Annual Summer Symposium Registration! Administrators and registered nurses will be able to earn up to 11.5 hours of continuing education.

Call the Embassy Suites Resort at (800) 876-0010 to reserve your overnight room. Use group code “HCA” to identify yourself as a NC Health Care Facilities Association Convention attendee! To make your reservation on-line, visit http://tinyurl.com/summersymposium2017.

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In a recent survey of our member providers, the number one issue noted was staff retention and reducing employee turnover. We have been fortunate enough to secure a nationally recognized speaker on this topic, Cara Silletto, MBA, President of Crescendo Strategies. Crescendo Strategies is a firm committed to reducing the unnecessary employee turnover by bridging generational gaps and making leaders more effective in their roles. Cara currently sits in a unique spot for her specialty of bridging the great generational divide, because she is an early Millennial herself, born in 1981, yet she is equipped with an MBA and more than 14 years of experience learning the unwritten expectations of older managers and business owners in order to advance her own career. Workforce Magazine named Cara a “Game Changer” and Recruiter.com named her in their “Top 10 Company Culture Experts to Watch.” Cara is also the co-author of “What’s Next in HR.”

Click Here to watch a short video from Cara!

About the Program

Join us for our Workforce Summit, where we’ll tackle your staffing challenges head on! Come learn insights about the shifting demographics of the workforce, employees’ evolving expectations, and strategies for improving staffing stability and reducing unnecessary employee turnover. We’ll also dive into the mindset of your Millennial workers, those under 37, to explain exactly why they think and work so differently than previous generations. By the time you leave this workshop, you’ll discover the true cost of employee turnover, know how to assess your brand as an employer and walk away with realistic plans for improving your workforce woes.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the current and shifting workforce demographics
• Discuss the evolution of employee expectations over the past decade
• Learn how generational differences impact the workforce and why today’s youngest generation of workers thinks and acts differently than previous generations
• Discover strategies for reducing unnecessary employee turnover and increasing staffing stability

Dates Offered:

June 27th – Charlotte, NC
June 28th – Raleigh, NC

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD AND PRINT THE BROCHURE!

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As you may know from previous articles, the Emergency Preparedness Final Rule was released on Friday, September 16, 2016. The rule impacts skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) and intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ICF/IIDs), but does not apply to assisted living providers.

On June 2, 2017, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Emergency Preparedness Interpretive Guidance (IG), which can be found here. AHCA members are highly encouraged to look through the IG. Providers will need to comply with the final rule by November 2017.

Click here for a summary AHCA put together of the IG for your use.

Finally, AHCA has an Emergency Preparedness Final Rule Webinar Series that can be found here. The next Webinar will be on Thursday, July 13, from 2:00 – 3:00 PM ET, with guest speaker J. David Weidner, MPH, REHS, MEP, CEM, Director of Emergency Management at the Health Care Association of New Jersey, and will focus on emergency exercise design in 60 minutes or less.

Please contact Erin Prendergast (SNF Providers) or Dana Halvorson (ICF/IID Providers) with any questions.

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Do not miss the NCHCFA Day at the Beach – Volleyball & Corn Hole Tournament on Thursday, August 10th. Join your colleagues on the beach for an afternoon of fun! Represent your district in the NCHCFA Volleyball Tournament. Challenge the NCHCFA staff and Board of Directors in the quest for the Chairman’s Cup. If you are not set on volleyball, get a team together for the Corn Hole Tournament. Sponsors will provide snacks, beverages, and prizes.

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Until June 26th, CMS is accepting stakeholder comments identifying the financial and regulatory burdens resulting from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’(CMS) Proposed Rule: Medicare Program: Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Skilled Nursing Facilities for FY 2018, SNF Value-Based Purchasing Program, etc. Submission of your most significant concerns and descriptions of budgetary impacts may result in major portions of the Requirements being updated, repealed, or delayed. Please add any regulation that you feel imposes an excessive burden by identifying the rule by number as well as the points that have concerned you the most and represent the greatest burden for your operation. Although we are soliciting comments on the requirements of participation, providers are able to submit comments about anything contained within the proposed rule.

Link to the submission site for these comments: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=CMS-2017-0060-0002

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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) 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.

To register, click here for the Participation Agreement and fax or e-mail it back to Lisa Klemis, contact information is on the Participation Agreement. For more details, e-mail Leighann Sauls at Leighann.Sauls@area-F.hcqis.org or call (919) 745-4730.

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Alliant Quality, the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for North Carolina is seeking central North Carolina skilled nursing facilities interested in collaborating on the Special Innovation Project (SIP) Improving Access to Palliative Care in the Long Term Care Facility.

Palliative care focuses on comfort and improving quality of life. A team of professionals helps residents and families navigate through the health care system and make health care decisions that are right for them. Goals of this project not only include providing quality of life and satisfaction for residents of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), but also provision of services that minimize risks of potentially avoidable transfers to acute care.

Often, nursing home residents lack advance directives that would assist them at the end of life. When a resident, without an advanced directive, suffers a worsening of their clinical condition, a cascade of care is put into motion and can trigger unwanted emergency room visits and admissions, which can lead to other complications. The provision of palliative care services for SNF residents supports person-directed care in a proactive way to honor the patient and their choices.

Alliant Quality, in partnership with SNFs and palliative care organizations, will develop customized education and learning sessions for SNF leaders to better understand palliative care and its beneficial role for the residents whom they are caring for each day. This educational offering will be pilot-tested in central North Carolina with SNFs who are interested in this Special Innovation Project offered through the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.

Participating SNFs will have the opportunity to:

• Receive free training programs designed to improve their SNF staff competency and knowledge related to end-of-life care
• Join a learning network with experts on palliative care in the SNF setting
• Partner with palliative care providers in order to improve the quality of life of their residents
• Implement low-burden measurement strategies that monitor resident and family satisfaction with end-of-life care
• Improve rates of avoidable acute care transfers and hospital admission and readmission rates

For more information, contact:
Jennifer Judson RN, BSN
Project Lead, Palliative Care
Office: (678) 527-3473
Jennifer.Judson@alliantquality.org

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A Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Webcast will be held on June 28, 2017, at 10:00 AM ET. This Webcast will cover an overview of Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Consolidated Billing information. In addition, the Webcast will review inclusions/exclusions; any new SNF updates as well as SNF paid claim error rates and top SNF denial reason codes.

To register for this Webcast, click here.

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Medicare is taking steps to remove Social Security numbers from Medicare cards. Through this initiative, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will prevent fraud, fight identity theft and protect essential program funding and the private healthcare and financial information of our Medicare beneficiaries.

CMS will issue new Medicare cards with a new unique, randomly-assigned number called a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) to replace the existing Social Security-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) both on the cards and in various CMS systems now in use. CMS will start mailing new cards to people with Medicare benefits in April 2018. All Medicare cards will be replaced by April 2019.

CMS is committed to helping providers by giving them the tools they need and wants to make this process as easy as possible for you, your patients, and your staff. Based on feedback from healthcare providers, practice managers and other stakeholders, CMS is developing capabilities where doctors and other healthcare providers will be able to look up the new MBI through a secure tool at the point of service. To make this change easier for you and your business operations, there is a 21-month transition period where all healthcare providers will be able to use either the MBI or the HICN for billing purposes.

Therefore, even though your systems will need to be able to accept the new MBI format by April 2018, you can continue to bill and file healthcare claims using a patient’s HICN during the transition period. We encourage you to work with your billing vendor to make sure that your system will be updated to reflect these changes as well.

Here are 5 steps you can take today to help your healthcare facility get ready:

1. Go to our provider Website and sign-up for the weekly MLN Connects® newsletter.
2. Attend the CMS quarterly calls to get more information. CMS will let you know when calls are scheduled in the MLN Connects newsletter.
3. Verify all of your Medicare patients’ addresses. If the addresses you have on file are different than the Medicare address you get on electronic eligibility transactions, ask your patients to contact Social Security and update their Medicare records.
4. Work with CMS to help your Medicare patients adjust to their new Medicare card. When available later this fall, you can display helpful information about the new Medicare cards. Hang posters about the change in your offices to help us spread the word.
5. Test your system changes and work with your billing office staff to be sure your office is ready to use the new MBI format.

CMS will keep working closely with you to answer your questions and hear your concerns. To learn more, visit http://cms.gov/Medicare/SSNRI/Providers/Providers.html.

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has renewed the Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage (ABN) Form CMS-R-131 issued by providers to original Medicare beneficiaries in situations where Medicare payment is expected to be denied. Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) must use the ABN for items/services expected to be denied under Medicare Part B only. The effective date for use of this ABN form is 6/21/2017. Please note no changes have been made to the form itself; however, the newly incorporated expiration date is March 2020.

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Bernie Dana draws on his 28 years of experience as an executive and consultant, his academic training and research in quality management, and his involvement in the AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award program in developing this practical guide to creating a quality management system in your organization. He begins with the crucial role of leadership and the basics of quality that will enable leaders and supervisors to shift from the inspection-oriented and crisis management thinking that is often embedded in long term care. He then provides practical guidelines for developing six essential elements of a quality management system that will be the foundation for continuous performance improvement. This new edition provides a step-by-step process for developing a long-range plan and creating and using a balanced scorecard of key measures to assess organizational performance. This is a companion book to Continuous Quality Improvement.

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

Product # 6816
AHCA Members (on-line price) $34.95

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It’s here and it’s hot! This year’s AHCA/NCAL Convention & Expo Preliminary Program is now available on-line! You can even read it on your mobile devices. Take a look at what Las Vegas has in store for you October 15-18, 2017 in this easy-to-access, easy-to-read flip book.

This year’s Convention & Expo offers national keynote speakers, valuable education, professional networking and exciting exhibits staffed with experts ready to help your company excel. The Gala Dinner & Show (separate ticketed event) is going to be a fantastic night of music, food, and fun that you will remember long after the Las Vegas night ends with Huey Lewis and the News headlining! Register early and save! Early bird registration and savings continue through July 21.

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This book offers CNAs the support of trained and experienced mentors to guide their way as they develop into quality health care professionals. Implementing this program can help you reduce your facility’s CNA turnover rate, save money and build a more competent staff. You’ll have happier residents and a higher quality facility as a result!

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

Product #6706
AHCA MEMBERS $59.95

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If you were unable to attend one of our sessions on the introduction to the new regulations, the notebook used in the training is now available for purchase (Polly Welsh’s PowerPoint presentation). E-mail Donna Snyder to order a notebook for your facility at donnas@nchcfa.org. The cost is $25.00 plus tax and shipping.

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Why some children may not visit LTC residents

http://www.mcknights.com/daily-editors-notes/why-some-children-may-not-visit-ltc-residents/article/668932

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The Mississippi River is not the longest in the U.S. The Mississippi may have Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but despite that fiction, the Missouri River has this fact: At 2,341 miles, it is it 139 miles longer than the Mighty Mississippi.

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