07/14/2022
Recap: CMS Nursing Home Stakeholder Call
On the nursing home stakeholder call hosted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on July 13, CMS provided updates on the recently released requirement of participation information, five-star staffing changes, updated enhanced barrier precautions, and national mental health strategies.
Jean Moody, CMS Deputy Director for the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality, shared the new “988” universal telephone number for America's suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. The new number will replace the 1-800 number and go live on July 16. Additional information and toolkits can be found on the substance abuse and mental health services administration website.
CDC provided a PowerPoint presentation on the updated guidance on enhanced barrier precaution (EBP) for nursing homes. Evan Shulman with CMS provided an update on the change to the staffing star rating which will be impacted by six staffing elements. Evan noted that there are more points assigned to staffing level measures than turnover measures because of the more well-established relationship between staffing level and quality. Similar to the staffing threshold methodology implemented in April of 2019, the five-star rating threshold is based on staffing levels of nursing homes with high performance on quality measures. The remaining thresholds are assigned to produce four equally sized groups to identify the thresholds from one to four stars. Thresholds will remain static over time, allowing facilities to demonstrate improvement by giving a static target. The methodology will no longer be adding one star to the overall rating of facilities that have a four-star staffing rating; only those with a five-star staffing rating will get an increase in their overall star rating. Details on the methodology can be found in the Five Star Technical User Guide. Preliminary analyses conducted by colleagues at LeadingAge New York indicate that more facilities will be losing a star than will be gaining a star under the new methodology.
CMS provided a summary of the revised surveyor guidance for phase 2 and 3 of the requirements of participation for nursing homes which can be found in the QSO-22-19-NH memo. Highlights of the changes were covered and can be found in the CMS Fact Sheet. Providers were reminded that training is also available for providers on the QSEP website. LeadingAge Ohio’s next all-member call on Tuesday, July 19 at 11:30am will be focused on the new Requirements of Participation.
CMS announced their intent to propose minimum staffing requirements that nursing homes must meet in 2023. CMS received over 3,000 comments from the SNF fiscal year 2023 proposed rule and intends to conduct a new mixed method research study to develop the draft proposal.
The webinar was recorded and will be posted on the CMS’s Transcripts and Podcast Page. The next SNF Open Door Forum Call is scheduled for August 4, 2022, at 2:00PM.
