Reminder of Upcoming Deadlines
Medicaid cost reports for 2018 along with required certifications are due Mon., July 29th. Those filing and/or certifying the report must have the appropriate Health Commerce System (HCS) permissions in place. The permissions application, which must be submitted with sufficient time for processing, is available here. The cost report Dear Administrator Letter (DAL) is available here. Members should make every effort to file an accurate and timely cost report to avoid a detrimental impact on their home's Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI) score.
Members should also make sure that their Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) data submission covering April 1st through June 30th is accurate and finalized with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) by Aug. 14th. PBJ submissions are used to calculate quarterly staffing ratings used in the Five-Star Quality Rating System. Only data that are successfully submitted by the deadline are used in determining ratings, and inaccurate submissions can result in a home being assigned a single star for the staffing domain. Providers may overwrite previously submitted data for that quarter until the deadline date.
Special attention should be paid to the following:
- ensuring that meal break time is excluded for each employee when hours are reported (even when a meal break is not taken);
- ensuring that providers are meeting, and accurately reflecting in their reporting, the requirement to have an RN on site for at least eight consecutive hours, seven days per week; and
- ensuring that Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessments, specifically discharge assessments, are submitted in a timely manner to ensure that the home’s daily census, which CMS uses to compute staffing, is accurate.
CMS refers homes that fail to meet the RN staffing requirement as well as homes that have low weekend staffing to the State’s survey agency for further scrutiny. The latest version of the PBJ manual and related resources are posted here.
Nursing homes must file Executive Order (EO) #38 disclosure forms by July 29th as well. Detailed guidance is available here.
Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841