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Don't be left in the dark during the QI/QM blackout

PPS Alert for Long-Term Care, May 1, 2010

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to PPS Alert for Long-Term Care.

After the MDS 3.0 is implemented October 1, providers and surveyors will not have access to the quality indicator and quality measure (QI/QM) reports for an undetermined period of time.

“CMS is pulling the reports offline when they migrate to the new MDS 3.0 format, because they need time to aggregate data and define what and how they will measure for the QI/QMs in the MDS 3.0,” says Katherine McCarthy, business account manager at PointRight, Inc., in Lexington, MA.

Although the time in which there will be no QI/QM reports is being referred to as a blackout period, CMS officials want to make sure that providers understand this does not change their quality assurance and improvement activities.

“There will be some gap in the reports that the nursing homes get back, but there is no gap in terms of what a nursing home would normally do for QI/QM tracking and monitoring. They will continue to collect and send that data to CMS,” says Mary Kahn, public affairs specialist at CMS. “It is like the nursing homes will continue to have to turn in their test papers, but they won’t be getting their grades back as quickly. The MDS 3.0 is a new way of collecting the information, so you have to build some history with this collection instrument to then see what the report card is going to say.”

So what exactly does the QI/QM blackout period mean for your quality improvement efforts?
 

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to PPS Alert for Long-Term Care.

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