Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare Today, October 7, 2019, CMS announced “a major enhancement of the information available to nursing home residents, families, and caregivers on the Agency’s Nursing Home Compare website”. Later this month, CMS will – for the first time – display a consumer alert icon next to…… Continue reading Trump Administration Enhances Transparency about Abuse and Neglect Five-Star Update

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare CMS posted version 1.7.1 of jRAVEN  on October 7, 2019 – 2 weeks after posting version 1.7.0.   Version 1.7.1 is the version you should be using if your facility utilizes the CMS free software for encoding and transmitting the MDS 3.0. The Release Notes are…… Continue reading Updated Version Available for jRAVEN Users

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare “Transmittal 2299, dated May 3, 2019, is being rescinded and replaced by Transmittal 2366 dated, October 3, 2019, to add new business requirement 11152.11 and new HIPPS codes file attachment. All other information remains the same. This Change Request 11152/Transmittal 2366 will implement the Skilled…… Continue reading Implementation of the SNF Patient Driven Payment Model

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare As reported on Friday, October 4th, CMS has posted a  revision to the PDPM DLL Package to correct four bugs that were identified after the V1.0002 release (September 27, 2019).  The package contains updated test files and documentation.   This revision package will be installed by…… Continue reading CMS Posts a Revision to the PDPM DLL Package

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare CMS issued the following statements late afternoon, Friday, October 4, 2019: CMS is aware of issues with the latest PDPM DLL Package (V1.0002 FINAL). We are targeting to release an updated version on Monday, October 7, 2019, which corrects the identified grouper discrepancies. SNF providers…… Continue reading SNF PDPM Assessments and Grouper Update

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare A lot of information/clarification regarding the use of the Optional State Assessment (OSA) has been provided this afternoon, ahead of the October 1st implementation of the MDS 3.0 v1.17.1 Item Set and the PDPM classification/reimbursement system.  Iowa has long used the RUG-III grouper to provide…… Continue reading IOWA LTC PROVIDERS: Information from the IA MDS Automation Coordinator re: State Case-Mix/OSA

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare A couple of days ago, I provided links to the individual August SNF QRP training videos.  CMS has also provided an all-in-one-place list of these training videos which is helpful to see all videos on 1 page and select the video you wish to view…… Continue reading August 2019 CMS SNF QRP Training Sessions – Additional Information Available

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare If you are a SNF/LTC or Swing Bed facility and use jRAVEN software to encode and transmit MDS 3.0 data to CMS, the version you need to use starting October 1, 2019 is now available for download at https://qtso.cms.gov/software/jraven-170. The following was posted on the…… Continue reading jRAVEN v1.7.0 Now Available for Download

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare Just in time for October 1st, CMS has posted the recorded training videos from the August 13th and 14th SNF QRP Training Sessions.  Here are those videos: Welcome/Introductions – August 13, 2019   (Length…26:01) Section A, I, J, and O Updates  (Length…1:06:20) Changes to the RAI…… Continue reading August 2019 CMS SNF QRP Training Videos Now Available

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare CMS has provided a 2-page Description of Changes document that shows the changes made from the preliminary version, posted in May 2019 to the final version that was posted one (1) week ago. Thank you CMS – this posting is greatly appreciated!