Sepsis—a key driver of hospital readmissions—can have negative clinical impacts for residents and negative financial, quality, survey, and even legal impacts for nursing homes. Here is a review of important basics: What is sepsis? The current clinical definition of sepsis is “life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response …
This communication pertains to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 and FY 2027 Skilled Nursing Facility Value-Based Purchasing (SNF VBP) Program performance standards for the Total Nursing Staff Turnover (Nursing Staff Turnover) measure which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published in the FY 2024 SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS) …
In this podcast, Amy Stewart, MSN, RN, DNS-MT, QCP-MT, RAC-MT, RAC-MTA, chief nursing officer for AAPACN, and Denise Winzeler, BSN, RN, LNHA, DNS-MT, QCP-MT, curriculum development specialist for AAPACN, discuss how a comprehensive review of whole systems can help to improve Quality Measure outcomes in skilled nursing facilities and how …
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The newest section GG Quality Measure (QM), the Discharge Function Score, has left many nurse assessment coordinators (NACs) with more questions than answers about how it is calculated. This measure estimates the percentage of Medicare Part A skilled nursing facility (SNF) stays that meet or exceed an expected Discharge Function …
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering a web-based training course that provides a high-level overview of how data elements within CMS patient/resident assessment instruments are used to construct quality measures (QMs) across post-acute care (PAC) settings. The course also discusses the relationship between these data elements …
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering an updated series of web-based training courses that provide an overview of the assessment and guidance to promote accurate coding of the post-acute care (PAC) cross-setting Section GG data elements. Each course contains interactive exercises to test your understanding. To …
The QIO program has updated its resources list to offer a searchable database of tools and resources from across all QIOs that SNFs, NFs, and other providers may access for free. For example, recent video-on-demand presentations include F686: Skin Integrity – Pressure Injury (Roundtable) and F880 – Infection Control (Roundtable) …
Nurse assessment coordinators (NACs) will soon begin preparing the interdisciplinary team for the finalized MDS 3.0 version 1.19.1 item set changes, as well as the revised coding instructions in the yet-to-be-finalized Long-Term Care Facility Resident Assessment Instrument 3.0 User’s Manual v1.19.1 (RAI User’s Manual), that will go into effect on …
The Quick Guide to the SNF QRP iQIES Report: Resident-Level QM Report tool offers detailed information on how to interpret the SNF QRP Resident-Level Report for each MDS-based measure, depending on if the resident has not triggered (NT) or has triggered (X). This AAPACN resource is copyright protected. AAPACN individual …
Someone with an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 130 may be considered above average for intelligence but still not understand the complexities of the MDS 3.0 Quality Measures (QMs). This series of articles on QMs will improve the QM IQs of healthcare professionals in long-term care, starting here with two long-stay …
