MDS Alert

For facilities receiving a traditional survey, it won't be business as usual.

Wondering how surveyors will manage without facilities' QI/QM reports, which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says won't be available for a number of months after the MDS 3.0 rolls out?

The basics: Surveyors performing the traditional survey use the computer-generated reports to focus on concerns and help select a resident sample for the survey. And during the MDS transition period when QIs/QMs won't be available, the traditional survey will "revert to the survey process in place before the MDS database became automated in 1998," reported CMS' Karen Schoeneman, in a CMS Webinar on the MDS 3.0.

That means surveyors will arrive at the facility and ask you to complete the roster/sample matrix (CMS 802). "This is part of the survey process now," noted Schoeneman. Once enough MDS 3.0 data is available, "the traditional survey process will resume" using the QI/QM reports, she said.

Good news: The lack of QI/QM reports won't affect how surveyors select residents for the Quality Indicator Survey. That's because the QIS randomly identifies residents for the sample for surveyors' Stage 1 assessments, says Cindy Mason, RN, VP of provider services for Nursing Home Quality in Denver, Colo. And facilities don't complete the CMS 802 for the QIS, Schoeneman noted.

The QIS software does use MDS data to "calculate issues for further investigation," said Schoeneman. And "CMS has its contractors busy redesigning the QIS to match the data coming in from the MDS 3.0." "The MDS 2.0 data elements for the QIS and the MDS 3.0 data elements are different -- so there will be some changes," says QIS expert Kenneth Daily, LNHA, founder and president of Elder Care Systems Group. "But based on everything I have seen and heard, the change shouldn't interfere with the QIS process," he says.