Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare The next CMS Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF)/Long Term Care (LTC) Open Door Forum scheduled for: Date:  Thursday, September 19, 2019 Start Time:  2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Eastern Time (ET); Please dial-in at least 15 minutes before call start time. Conference Leaders: Todd Smith &…… Continue reading CMS Schedules Next SNF/LTC Open Door Forum

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare Late in the afternoon of September 6, 2019, CMS posted an update to Appendix Q – Core Guidelines for Determining Immediate Jeopardy, effective immediately. The 6-page update is part of CMS Transmittal 192.  CMS has revised guidance to reinsert language referring criminal acts to law…… Continue reading Revisions to State Operations Manual (SOM), Appendix Q

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare CMS posted the updated MDS 3.0 Quality Measures User’s Manual – V12.1 on Wednesday, September 4, 2019.  The 110-page manual is effective October 1, 2019.  The MDS 3.0 QM User’s Manual V12.1 contains detailed specifications for the MDS 3.0 quality measures (QM) and supersedes V12.0…… Continue reading MDS 3.0 Quality Measures and SNF QRP Measures Manuals Updated

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare CMS posted updated PDPM resources on Friday afternoon, August 30, 2019. Five (5) Fact Sheets were updated and are now found in .zip format.  Once you open a file, select the redline version to see what’s different (thank you CMS – much appreciated): Concurrent and…… Continue reading CMS Updates PDPM Resources

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare The Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a 40-page report last week (August 21, 2019) that assessed 11 of 12 states that conducted background checks on prospective LTC employees during 2017 and 2018. “Background checks are an important safety measure that can help protect the…… Continue reading Latest OIG Report: Background Check Program for LTC Providers

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare During this afternoon’s CMS Understanding Your SNF VBP Program Performance Score Report call, it was announced provider’s SNF VBP annual performance reports were placed in CASPER today.  Be sure to retrieve your 1st year of program performance report and review it carefully.  Correction requests to…… Continue reading Check CASPER Reports Now for Your SNF VBP Performance Report!