The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently posted the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Skilled Nursing Facility Prospective Payment System (SNF PPS) proposed rule for public inspection. The payment news is good—a 3.7 percent ($1.2 billion) aggregate increase in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare Part A payments to SNFs in FY …
Information primarily on the Oct. 1, 2023 transition:
Alert: Electronic medical records (EMRs) and electronic health records (EHRs) are often used interchangeably. An EMR allows the electronic entry, storage, and maintenance of digital medical data. EHRs contain patients’ records from doctors and include demographics, test results, medical history, history of present illness (HPI), and medications. EMRs are part …
In calendar year (CY) 2022, F-tag 695 (Respiratory/Tracheostomy Care and Suctioning) was the 11th most commonly cited F-tag nationwide. In comparison, F695 was the 16th most common citation overall in CY 2021 and only the 20th most common overall in pre-pandemic 2019, according to QCOR data accessed on Feb. 3, …
The MDS 3.0 CAT specifications (V1.06.0) are now available. The specifications currently consist of the PDF documentation files, which describe the logic changes and provide pseudocode. Note that many of the CAT triggers are changing as a result of the V3.01.0 MDS Data Specification changes already posted. In the recent …
On April 4, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Skilled Nursing Facility Prospective Payment System (SNF PPS) proposed rule for public inspection. The payment news is good—a 3.7 percent ($1.2 billion) aggregate increase in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare Part A payments to …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now uses the term “post-COVID conditions” (PCC) to label the multitude of physical and mental health consequences that some people—including those who had an initial mild or asymptomatic acute SARS-CoV-2 infection—continue to experience four or more weeks post-infection, according to Post-COVID Conditions: …
Quality of life is a “fundamental principle” that feeds into—and flows from—all resident care and services, according to 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §483.24. The F-tag 675 surveyor guidance in Appendix PP of the State Operations Manual offers insights on the definition of quality of life and what it …
Effective with the Oct. 1, 2023, implementation of MDS v1.18.11, items A1005 (Ethnicity), A1010 (Race), A1110 (Language), and B1300 (Health Literacy) will provide nurse assessment coordinators (NACs) and other interdisciplinary team members with a starting point for creating more culturally competent care plans—especially if the team conducts a more detailed …
Like every aspect of nursing home operations, staff education and training are critical to providing pain management for residents with opioid use disorder (OUD), other substance use disorders, or an addiction history. Each resident’s pain management plan should be highly resident-centered and individualized, says Annette Sanders, MSN, RN, CLNC, ICP, …
