More than 15,000 nursing professionals working in long-term care take AAPACN education online courses each year. One of the common questions AAPACN receives from new students is, “How can I access my Learner Dashboard?” The Learner Dashboard is the main online education hub where learners can review and start their …
Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Skilled Nursing Facilities; Updates to the Quality Reporting Program for Federal Fiscal Year 2027 Filed on: 04/02/2026 at 5:15 pm Scheduled Pub. Date: 04/07/2026 PDF 114 Pages (397 KB) Permalink Fact sheet Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Skilled Nursing Facility Prospective Payment System Proposed …
Listen to this article Your browser does not support the audio element. Under the Skilled Nursing Facility Quality Reporting Program (SNF QRP), SNFs must meet an annual 90 percent MDS submission threshold to help avoid a 2 percent cut in their annual payment update (APU) in the applicable fiscal year …
Listen to this article Your browser does not support the audio element. Seasonal celebrations often remind us how quickly small choices can add up. A little handful of candy or a few fruit jelly slices may seem insignificant, but piece by piece they do make an impact. In healthcare documentation …
Question: A dialysis patient is going out of the facility for dialysis. We use the appropriate N18 code, but would Z99.2 be excluded since dialysis isn’t provided in-house? Answer from Carol Maher, RN, GERO-BC, RAC-MTA, RAC-MT, CPC: The resident remains your SNF’s resident while receiving dialysis. Coding should reflect the …
Question: We have a patient who is on hospice but elected to be sent out over the weekend for an acute illness, so he revoked his hospice status. He came back less than 24 hours later. If he is picked back up on hospice within the next day or two, …
Question: If a resident has a fall that causes a hairline clavicle fracture, is that automatically considered a major injury? Answer from Carol Maher, RN, GERO-BC, RAC-MTA, RAC-MT, CPC:Yes, any traumatic fracture related to a fall is a fall with major injury—even a finger or toe. This AAPACN resource is …
The HCP Flu Vaccination Module, which is part of the HCP component in NHSN, is used to input required NHSN data for the SNF QRP. This site provides access to the HCP Vaccination Module: Influenza Vaccination Summary Protocol, which is the primary manual for the module. In addition, it provides …
In this LTC NAC Chat podcast episode, Amy Stewart, MSN, RN, DNS-MT, QCP-MT, RAC-MT, RAC-MTA, chief nursing officer for AAPACN, and Jessie McGill, RN, BSN, RAC-MT, RAC-MTA, senior curriculum development specialist for AAPACN, discuss recent Five-Star and quality measure changes. Additional Resources:
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The Long-Stay Antipsychotic Measure: Data Source and Look-Back Guide can be used by interdisciplinary teams to simplify the complex data sources and timeframes used in this measure. The tool clearly outlines numerator criteria and key exclusions, while identifying how MDS, pharmacy, and claims data contribute to calculation. Designed as a …
