Avoid the Jam: File PBJ Reports in Advance of Nov. 14th Deadline
With the Nov. 14th deadline for submitting staffing data for July, August, and September 2017 through the Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) system fast approaching, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted public use files containing some PBJ nursing staff data. The data, which shows raw daily staff hour counts for RN, LPN, and CNA positions, is available here.
The posting provides data for the first two quarters of calendar year 2017 and includes the following positions: director of nursing, registered nurses with administrative duties, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses with administrative duties, licensed practical nurses, certified nurse aides, medication aides, and nurse aides in training. LeadingAge NY will consolidate and analyze the data for New York homes and provide results of the analysis to members.
While CMS intends to start using the PBJ data to calculate and report staffing levels, tenure, and turnover measures in 2018, at this time, the 5-Star system continues to rely on staffing data collected on form CMS-671 at the time of a facility’s survey.
As quarterly submissions are finalized, members should keep in mind that CMS has developed a method for facilities to link old employee identifiers with new ones to enable tracking of each unique employee in cases where employee identifiers may have changed. This process is described in a September 2017 update to the PBJ Policy Manual, available here. The PBJ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document has been updated to include information on how daily census is calculated from the MDS and how and when CMS updates the PBJ reporting icon that appears on the Nursing Home Compare website. The FAQs are available here. In both documents, new information is shown in red.
Because the system tends to become slower as the deadline approaches, we urge members to submit their data well before Nov. 14th.
Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841