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PPS Alert for Long-Term Care

Editor's note: This week's edition of Ask SNFInfo includes an excerpt of an article titled "Take the first step toward transition: Start using MDS 3.0 interviews" from the May 2008 issue of PPS Alert. Expect more helpful tips and advice from PPSA in every issue to come!

The primary focus of the MDS 3.0 will be individualized, resident-centered assessment and care, says Patricia Boyer, MSM, RN, NHA, president of the long-term care consulting firm Boyer and Associates, LLC, in Brookfield, WI. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise because most of the revised guidance to surveyors that CMS has published in the past few years also emphasizes resident-centered care. “So all of the regulations are being integrated into this MDS 3.0,” she adds.

The resident interviews in the MDS 3.0 tie in with the “whole direction that care in nursing homes is going,” says Rena R. Shephard, MHA, RN, RAC-MT, C-NE, founding chair and executive editor of the American Association of Nurse Assessment Coordinators and president of RRS Healthcare Consulting Services in San Diego. “We’ve certainly heard from CMS, from the regional office level as well as the central office level, that resident-centered, resident-directed care is really what facilities should be moving toward.

“There is such an important value to our residents in the scripted interviews that are incorporated into the MDS 3.0. There isn’t anything but good that can happen from beginning to use them. The information that is collected is such a rich source for care planning—to help improve the quality of care and to move toward resident-directed care based on what is important to the residents and their priorities. The research shows that moderately cognitively impaired residents can give us a lot of good information in those areas, and even a significant proportion of severely cognitively impaired residents can.”