Special Open Door Forum for NHs and HHAs

On Wed., Feb. 25, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will host a Special Open Door Forum (SODF) to provide an overview of standardized data for quality measures and standarized assessments required under the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014. Under the IMPACT Act, several Post-acute Care (PAC) providers such as, long term care hospitals, Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF), Home Health Agencies (HHAs) and inpatient rehabilitaion facilities will be required to provide standarized data. As per the IMPACT Act, the data has to be "standarized and interoperable so as to allow for the exchange of such data among post-acute care providers and other providers and the use by such providers of such data that has been so exchanged... to facilitate coordinated care and improve Medicare beneficiary outcomes."

Deadlines have been set for new quality measures, by October 2016 for SNFs and January 2017 for HHAs. The quality measures, at a minimum, would include the following quality domains: 1) functional status and changes in function; 2) skin integrity and changes in skin integrity; 3) medication reconciliation; 4) incidence of major falls; and 5) patient preference regarding treatment and discharge options.

This SODF will focus on a high-level overview of the requirements related to the use of standarized data for both quality measures and the assessment instrument domains.

The call will held on Wed., Feb. 25 from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. 

Participant dial-in number: 1-800-837-1935, conference code ID #: 9076244

Contact: Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871