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Quarterly PBJ Submission Due Nov. 14th

Nursing homes must finalize Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) data submissions covering July 1st through Sept. 30, 2022 by Nov. 14th. Five-Star staffing quality measures as well as increasing stakes of State staffing level requirements make accurate and timely submissions especially important. PBJ data are now being used to compute additional Five-Star staffing measures, including staff turnover and weekend staffing rates.

Only data that are successfully submitted by the deadline are used in Five-Star calculations, and inaccurate or missing submissions can result in a home being assigned a single star for the staffing domain for one quarter. Additionally, we expect New York State to utilize the data to measure compliance with State staffing level requirements.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) updated the PBJ Policy Manual in June 2022. The manual and related resources, including a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), are available for download at the bottom of the dedicated CMS PBJ webpage here. Providers may enter data once per quarter or as often as they like, but must have their quarterly submission finalized on or before Nov. 14th.

The following long-standing information may be of interest to staff new to PBJ reporting and highlights areas of concern identified by CMS that may warrant special attention to ensure accurate reporting:

Meal Breaks. Meal breaks must be subtracted from PBJ-reported time regardless of whether staff worked through lunch or actually took the break. When reporting, you must deduct the time allotted for meals from each employee’s daily hours.

RN Staffing. Providers should ensure that they are meeting the requirement to have a registered nurse (RN) on-site for at least eight consecutive hours, seven days per week; that their reporting accurately reflects the hours; and that they are able to readily provide necessary documentation to back up the reporting.

Varying Roles and Universal Workers. While reporting is based on primary roles, CMS recognizes that staff may completely shift their primary role in a given day, and in those cases, facilities can change the designated job title and split the staff member’s hours into two separate job roles during a shift if warranted. For facilities that use universal care workers, a reasonable methodology must be used to separate the time that the universal care worker spends performing their primary role from their time that is spent performing other activities. The PBJ FAQs provide further examples.

Training Time. Hours for staff who are attending training (either on-site or off-site) and are not available to perform their primary role, such as providing resident care, should not be reported. If another staff member is called in to fill in for staff participating in training, the hours for the replacement employee should be reported.

Staff Identifiers. With turnover rates now a part of Five-Star staffing measures, providers should ensure that the systems they have in place to identify individual workers, including contract staff, are working and that continuity is preserved if providers update or change their worker identifier systems.

CMS recommends that providers take advantage of the verification resources after uploading their data to ensure a successful submission.

Once the data is uploaded, the user should:

  • Check the My Submissions page. This feature will show the status of the submitted file.
  • Check the Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reporting (CASPER) application for a system-generated PBJ Final File Validation Report (FFVR) within 24 hours. If no FFVR appears, run a PBJ Submitter FFVR to check your file for errors.
  • Run the PBJ 1700D (Employee), 1702D (by Employer), 1703D (by Job Type), 1702S Staffing Summary, and Minimum Data Set (MDS) Census Reports to verify that the submitted quarterly PBJ data accurately reflects your records.

Information from CMS describing the various PBJ reports providers may access, including general and detailed MDS census reports, is available here. Providers are urged to submit data and run and review the various reports with sufficient time to make any necessary corrections prior to the final due date.

Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841