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Issue 12, December 28, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Medicare billing: 'Tis the season for SNF leaves of absence, are you prepared?

  In preparing for the holiday festivities, it is essen-tial for friends and family to understand...

• Op Ed: The real impacts of poor quality, inadequate compli-ance and weak risk management

  A number of interesting information drops oc-curred this past week or so that reminded me that...

• Q&A: Reducing readmissions to meet SNF VBP requirements

  Q: A patient is discharged from the skilled nursing facility (SNF) on day 24 and sent home to...

• Tip and tool: Protecting electronic resident health information

  The aspects of EHR that make them useful to long-term care (LTC) facilities also make them...

Issue 11, November 30, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Advice from the field: Reducing accounts receivable and improving collections

  Deborah Collum, national director of revenue cycle management for Covenant Retirement Communities...

• Regulatory compliance: New Supreme Court justice likely to be pro-business, skeptical of government agencies

  With the swearing in of Brett Kavanaugh for the previously vacant seat of Justice Anthony...

• Compliance: In #MeToo era, tighten up sexual harassment training and policies to avoid big settlements

  In an era of empowerment, it’s more important than ever to make sure your facility’s...

• Fraud & abuse: Ensure residents don't become fraud victims as CMS rolls out new cards

  Educate your residents about  their new Medicare cards and the ways people can protect...

• Quick tip and tool: Nursing and therapy collaboration for optimal payment: The triple-check

  There is a process that can help a facility monitor and identify areas of discrepancy and...

Issue 10, October 24, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Implications of consolidated billing under PDPM

  Under CMS’ new payment model to be imple-mented October 1, 2019, the Patient-Driven Pay-ment...

• Op ed: Are post-acute, site-neutral payments the future?

  In the 2019 OPPS (outpatient PPS) proposed rule, CMS in-cluded a site-neutral payment provision...

• Quick tip and tool: Turning critical thinking into critical writing

  Complete, accurate, and reflective documentation is a vital part of resident care that requires...

• Quality improvement: The role of infection control

  Three key elements of an effective infection control program are: surveillance, prevention, and...

• Quick tip on HIPAA: Facilities should be prepared to explain why if they don?t encrypt PHI

  It isn’t a requirement that patient protected health information (PHI) must be encrypted...

Issue 9, September 28, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Industry trends: Emphasis on shorter lengths of stay may cause identity crisis among SNFs

  Beneficiary enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans is on the rise, increasing from 5.3 million in...

• Q&A: Ready or Not: PDPM is Here

  Q: What assessments will be required for swing bed facilities?

• Fast focus: Keys to successful admissions

  The idea of reducing the risk of litigation through person-centered care is the idea that meeting...

• Quick tip and tool: Infection control competencies

    The goal for every healthcare worker is competency in infec-tion control techniques. To...

Issue 8, August 30, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Staff retention: How to determine the success of a healthcare organization

  A regional director for a SNF company with 24 facilities dialed the conference number for the...

• LTC nurse residency results in 86% retention rate

  Accountable care organizations, value-based care, and new reimbursement models are changing the...

• Stuck in neutral: Bundled payments and postacute providers

  After CMS nixed the mandatory expansion provisions for bundled payments and reduced the metro...

• Preparing your facility for an audit: Internal auditing and monitoring

  Do not wait for Medicare contractors or government au-ditors to come into your facility and find a...

• Quick tip and tool: Improving nursing/therapy collaboration through preadmission checklist

  Providing excellent care and delivering successful resident out-comes are goals for which all...

Issue 7, July 27, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Spice up your corporate compliance and ethics program with PEPPER

  Every spring, CMS makes available the Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report...

• Analyzing and using QM data

  Facilities must extend the investigative processes in order to fix quality problems...

• Q&A: Analyzing quality measures

  Stefanie Corbett: When you're thinking about who to bring to that table to review quality...

• Staff training: Implementing restorative nursing

  Restorative nursing has been around for decades. Since the 1987 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act...

Issue 6, June 29, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• PDPM: What SNFs need to know

  PDPM, as proposed, is designed to replace the current SNF payment methodology known as RUG-IV...

• Understanding RAI: Resident-centered care in a data- and payment-driven industry

  SNFs must provide quality care to residents in a field that is being suffocated by regulation and...

• Q&A: Improve your therapy and nursing collaboration

  Q: My facility is smaller in size. We average around a census of 80 at any given time. Our...

• Pressure injury prevention: What most facilities are doing wrong

  In the latest revisions to the Conditions of Participation, CMS renumbered the F-tag system and...

Issue 5, May 24, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Breaking news: New payment rule proposed for SNFs, called Patient-Driven Payment Model

  On Friday, April 27, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a...

• PDPM, survey, and quality: Understanding MDS accuracy and what you need for success

  As the long-term care industry faces changes on multiple fronts—including prospective...

• How to minimize bad debt

  Many healthcare providers spend more resources and time on collections rather than implementing...

• Senior care: Should national standards be created for assisted living facilities?

  Many American families, as their parents begin to age, debate what type of facility is best for...

Issue 4, April 27, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Reducing antipsychotics in nursing homes and SNFs

  The improper and, at times, unethical and illegal use of antipsy-chotic medications (APM) to sedate...

• How can SNFs get involved in alternative payment models, and why should they? History, benefits, and potential risks

  Much has been made of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) push away from...

• Q&A: Goodbye RUG-IV, hello RCS-1: Preparing for quality under a proposed payment system

  This Q&A was taken from HCPro’s webinar led by Maureen McCarthy, BS, RN, RAC-MT, QCP-MT...

• MedPAC advises CMS to establish payment equity between postacute care settings

  When will the Medicare trust funds run out? That depends on who you talk to. According to CMS, in...

Issue 3, March 1, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• The forgotten aspect of emergency preparedness: Recovery

  In 2017, Florida was hit by Hurricane Irma. Many facilities evacuated their resi-dents, per the...

• Four essential data qualities that SNFs must understand for exceptional up- and downstream partnerships

  Because you’re reading this article, I assume you agree that there is a need for partnerships...

• Q&A: Creating an effective antibiotic stewardship program

  Editor’s note: The following Q&A comes from HCPro’s webinar, “CMS’ New...

• Eight Medicare myths debunked for more accu-rate documentation

  To reduce your facility’s risk of unwanted outcomes and ensure proper Medicare reimbursement...

Issue 2, February 1, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• What are they thinking? How surveyors scrutinize your quality measures data

  Through 2017, there were two authorized methods surveyors used to conduct a survey: the...

• Are you up to speed on the new evaluation and reevaluation codes?

  On January 1, 2017, two significant changes went into effect in the therapy world: The...

• Involuntary discharges are speaking a new regulatory language

  Providers should be aware of the revisions made to some of the language in the transfer/discharge...

• Optimizing managed care partnerships to maximize clinical outcomes

  The below Q&A was taken from HCPro’s live webinar show, “Optimizing Managed Care...

Issue 1, January 1, 2018 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• RCS-1: Advantages, disadvantages, and how you can prepare

  Skilled nursing facility (SNF) providers are on the edge of their seats as they anticipate the...

• Interoperability: Balancing risks and opportunities

  The long-term care industry today finds itself at an information technology crossroads. The urgency...

• OIG investigations to keep in mind in 2018

  In the Office of Inspector General's (OIG) FY17 Work Plan, the agency outlined its plans for 2017...

• Training strategies for accurate ADL completion

  Activities of daily living (often called ADLs) are basic self-care activities that are considered...