Long-Term Care Survey Alert
Survey & Clinical News
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is solicting input for its Nursing Home Pay for Performance initiative. At press time, the agency had scheduled a special open door forum on Sept. 20 asking nursing home providers to share their ideas related to quality and payment incentives in the nursing home setting. The agenda called for Abt Associates of Cambridge, MA to present recommendations for a draft design of the P4P project.
Watch a slideshow of Abt's demonstration design posted on the demonstration Website (www.cms.hhs.gov/researchers/demos).
The MDS 3.0 continues to wend its way toward an eventual debut, but not anytime soon. CMS is "presently getting ready to go out into the field [with the instrument] in early 2006," reported CMS' Robert Connolly at a recent SNF/Long-Term Care open door forum (ODF). CMS has been doing research on the MDS 3.0's new items in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs and expects to have the research results in November, Connolly said.
Next on the agenda: CMS plans to conduct a pilot in March or April that will roll out to national testing for the MDS 3.0 in eight states shortly thereafter. CMS is only committed to go through validation and reliability testing with results in 2007 but it has not decided on an implementation date for the MDS 3.0, said Connolly.
Heads up if your facility provides alcohol-free mouthwash for residents. Medline Industries has initiated a voluntary recall of Personal Hygiene Admission kits containing alcohol-free mouthwash due to potential contamination with Burkholderia cepacia (B. cepacia).
B. cepacia usually doesn't cause symptoms in healthy people, but it has been known to cause serious respiratory infection in people with weakened immune systems or chronic lung disease. The bacteria is often resistant to common antibiotics. For a complete list of admission kits involved in the recall, go to www. medline.com or call Medline Industries at 1-800-MEDLINE.
Long-Term Care Survey Alert
- Quality of Care:
Don't Let Phone Orders Dial Up IJ Citations
Write off med errors with the right strategies. Phone medication orders can be a liability [...] - Training Tool:
Share These Phone Order 'Learning Points'
Don't accept phone orders without following these tips: Verbal/Telephone Orders Read Back Verification
• Verbal or phone [...] - Quality Assurance:
Stop Common Med Errors In Their Tracks
5 ways to help the medicine go down-safely.
Dispensing pills looks relatively simple--and therein lies the [...] - Survey Management:
Fix Your Maintenance Program Before It Turns Into A Broken Survey Record
Use a QA Approach to protect residents from common hazards.
Time is not on your side [...] - Infection Control:
Get A Jumpstart On Immunizations Before Flu, F Tags Catch Up With You
Beware: CMS will soon be tracking your immunization track record.
CMS is getting serious about boosting [...] - Clip 'N' Save:
Confused About When To Offer PPV?
Follow this chart and you won't be. - Patient Safety:
Sidestep This Potentially Lethal Medication Related Error
Develop systems to keep residents' coagulation status in the safety zone.
A great safety slogan for [...] - What Do You Think?
Question: Should your facility take all potentially winnable cases to informal dispute resolution?
Answer: If [...] - Care Planning:
Shed Light On Depression, Behaviors To Improve Outcomes
Light therapy, other novel remedies can be just what the doctor ordered.
A case of the [...] - Survey Appeals:
To Appeal Or Not To Appeal...Answer These Questions Before Rushing To Judgment
Legal experts lead you through the decision-making maze.
In the heat of the survey battle when [...] - Clip 'N' Save:
Watch Out For These Abbreviations
Using these shortcuts can short circuit your medication safety. - Survey & Clinical News
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is solicting input for its Nursing Home Pay [...]