UPDATE Weekly

Recently, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) released its new Bundled Payments Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI-Advanced) Request for Applications (RFA). To view the Website, click here and to view the American Health Care Association’s (AHCA’s) Webinar on BPCI-Advanced, please click here (note – you will need to login into AHCA’s Website to view the Webinar). The Webinar provides an overview of BPCI-Advanced, preliminary challenges and options as well as member Model 3 participant reactions.

AHCA’s key concern with BPCI-Advanced is the absence of a role for post-acute care (PAC) providers. Model 2, 3 and 4 all are collapsed into a single program which is most like Model 2 and is heavily focused on creating a pathway for physicians to participate in an advanced alternative payment method. Under the proposal, PAC provider challenges in Model 2 would become endemic throughout the new BPCI-Advanced – challenges with gainsharing, minimal use of the 3-day Stay Waiver and limited use of the Telehealth Waiver.

AHCA transmitted a letter to CMMI senior leadership expressing their deep concerns, offering proposed solutions and requesting a meeting. The letter can be read by clicking here.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

AHCA has also made available a word document containing a template letter which members engaged in Model 3 may use to convey their views and experiences with BPCI, Model 3 and offer observations on BPCI-Advanced. The letter only is a template and members, of course, should feel free to tailor the template to their own needs and views. This template can be accessed by clicking here.

AHCA strongly encourages members who chose to submit letters to:

• Contact CMMI Leadership Rather than Top Tier CMS Leadership: Send your letter to Dr. Jeet Guram, Special Advisor to the Administrator at jeet.guram@cms.hhs.gov and Amy Bassano at amy.bassano@cms.hhs.gov, Acting CMMI Director. AHCA recommends contacting CMMI leadership rather than CMS leadership. It is their hope to find solutions at the CMMI level before going to more senior leadership;
• Take a Collaborative and Solution Oriented Approach: The template letter provides openings to discuss your Model 3 successes and to urge CMMI to work with the SNF profession to continue exploring Model 3. SNFs are far more likely to open doors with a positive, collaborative tone; and
• Share Your Company’s Experience: Also included is a section in the template entitled YOUR COMPANY’S Model 3 Journey. Included in this section are openings to provide company specific data and outcomes. AHCA recommends focusing on patient outcomes and outcomes for the Medicare program.

Additionally, AHCA requests that members sending letters to CMMI either send a copy to AHCA or include them on the e-mail. If you elect the latter, please use mcheek@ahca.org.

As always, AHCA greatly appreciates member support and assistance with these important issues.

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Over 600 members and 500 trade members from across North Carolina and the southeast recently attended the Association’s Annual Convention and Expo held in Greensboro, NC. The highlight of the 2018 Convention was recognizing the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association 2018 Special Award recipients selected by the NCHCFA Education and Programs Committee:

District I Nurse Aide of the Year
Crystal Cagle – Smoky Mountain Health & Rehabilitation Center

District II Nurse Aide of the Year
Emma Williams – PruittHealth Town Center

District III Nurse Aide of the Year
Pattrina Johnson – Clapp’s Nursing Center

District IV Nurse Aide of the Year
Bertha Townsend – Highland House Rehabilitation & Healthcare

District V Nurse Aide of the Year
Halimah Hasan – Springbrook Nursing & Rehabilitation

2018 Riley W. Clapp Outstanding Service Award
Candace Hardy – Clapp’s Nursing Center

Halimah Hasan received the Fourteenth Annual J.R. Garrett, Jr. Direct Care Worker of the Year Award!

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To be as successful as possible, not for Profit organizations, especially trade associations, rely heavily on the volunteer time of its membership. One important way to make a difference is by serving on one of NCHCFA’s committees. Members have until February 15, 2018 to volunteer to serve on one of NCHCFA’s committees.

All committee assignments are for a two year term beginning at the time of appointment and ending February 29, 2020. Appointments are made by the Chair of NCHCFA’s Board of Directors. Except for the Associate Advisory Committee, only representatives from operators of member facilities in good standing are eligible to serve. Committees generally conduct two in-person meetings per year and others as needed by conference call. When submitting your request please choose more than one committee and make selections in order of preference. Please see below.

Individuals who serve on NCHCFA committees are leaders in the Association and are asked to lead by example. This includes committing to participate in committee activities and joining the NCHCFA Political Action Committee (PAC). All committee Chairs do strive, however, to be respectful of committee members’ time and busy schedules. Members currently on committees will need to go through the sign-up process again.

You have several options for turning in your committee sign-up form:

1) Submit on-line at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCHCFACommittees
2) E-mail your form to Karen Lennon at the Association office at KarenL@nchcfa.org
3) Fax to (919) 787-8418

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NCHCFA thanks all individuals that participated in the 2018 Convention and Exposition evaluation raffle. Congratulations to Amy Garrison of College Pines Health & Rehab and Amy Jones of Select Rehabilitation for winning a $100.00 cash prize! Again, we appreciate your valuable input.

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Since January 1, 2018, NCHCFA has allowed Assisted Living Facilities (ALFs) in North Carolina to join the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) through NCHCFA’s affiliation with AHCA/NCAL. Any ALF that elects to join NCAL will be a member facility of NCAL but will not be a member of NCHCFA.

If an ALF wishes to join NCAL, please e-mail Karen Lennon for membership dues information at KarenL@nchcfa.org or phone at (919) 782-3827.

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NCHCFA is adding a new benefit of membership in 2018—a monthly Lunch and Learn Webinar Series. NCHCFA will offer a one-hour Webinar on a timely and relevant topic to its members for no additional charge. There will be no CEUs offered for these Webinars. Information on topics for the year will be available in the coming weeks.

The next Webinar in the series is scheduled for February 15, 2018, from 12 noon-1:00 PM. Mark your calendar today! Webinar details are below:

Title: Using the Composite Measures to YOUR Advantage
Presenter: Alliant Quality (QIN-QIO for Georgia and North Carolina)

This Webinar will focus on utilizing composite measures as an important tool to monitor quality improvements and outcomes in nursing homes. The calculator can help nursing homes identify specific areas for improvement among 13 long-stay quality measures that comprise the composite score. Alliant Quality will focus on opportunities for improvement with the various quality measures and discuss best practices for successful outcomes.

Make sure that you are on a sound-enabled computer with speakers and click here to join the Webinar!

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The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) is pleased to announce the launch of a new Website to help long term and post-acute care providers administer CoreQ.

Developed by a team including Nicholas Castle, Ph.D., AHCA/NCAL, and providers with input from customer satisfaction vendors and residents, CoreQ is a set of five customer satisfaction measures for skilled nursing care centers (SNCCs) and assisted living communities (ALs) to use to assess satisfaction among patients, residents and their families. The measures capture short-stay and long-stay resident and family data for SNCCs, and resident and family data for ALs.

The Website includes available resources such as a CoreQ Technical Manual as well as a list of customer satisfaction vendors that have adopted CoreQ and can upload member CoreQ data to LTC Trend Tracker.

As part of AHCA/NCAL’s metric-based Quality Initiative to improve quality care, CoreQ allows providers across long term and post-acute care settings to measure overall customer satisfaction with a uniform set of questions. In 2016, the National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed three of the five CoreQ measures for SNCCs through extensive testing and evaluation of the measures’ reliability and validity.

For more information about the CoreQ, visit the new Website here. Please e-mail coreQ@ahca.org if you have any questions or need assistance.

For any assistance with LTC Trend Tracker, e-mail help@ltctrendtracker.com.

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The updated List of Excluded Individuals and Entities (LEIE) database file, which reflects all OIG exclusions and reinstatement actions up to, and including, those taken in January 2018 has been posted. The updated files are posted on OIG’s Website at https://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/exclusions_list.asp. Healthcare providers have an “affirmative duty” to check to ensure that excluded individuals are not working in their facilities or face significant fines.

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Alliant Quality wants to encourage SNFs to keep signing up for the National Collaborative – or SPACE. Alliant recommends having as much time as possible to get started on Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) work and improving facility quality measures in a systems approach to improve their five star and composite scores.

Alliant Quality is the Medicare Quality Innovation Network (QIN) – Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for North Carolina. Under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Alliant Quality invites your nursing home to participate in a collaborative designed to ensure that every nursing home resident receives the highest quality of care.

The Collaborative offers an exciting opportunity to learn from high performing nursing homes regarding their processes as they pertain to consistent/permanent staff assignment, teamwork and communications, leadership, regulatory compliance, clinical models, and quality of life indicators. The Collaborative aligns national nursing home quality initiatives and partnerships such as the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign, The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, and QAPI. Targeted focus areas will include increasing mobility, decreasing unnecessary use of antipsychotics in residents with dementia, decreasing potentially avoidable hospitalizations and decreasing healthcare acquired infections and conditions.

To register, click here for the Participation Agreement and fax or e-mail it back to Lisa Klemis, contact information is on the Participation Agreement. For more details, e-mail Leighann Sauls at Leighann.Sauls@area-F.hcqis.org or call (919) 745-4730.

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Alliant Quality, the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for North Carolina is seeking central North Carolina skilled nursing facilities interested in collaborating on the Special Innovation Project (SIP) Improving Access to Palliative Care in the Long Term Care Facility.

Palliative care focuses on comfort and improving quality of life. A team of professionals helps residents and families navigate through the health care system and make health care decisions that are right for them. Goals of this project not only include providing quality of life and satisfaction for residents of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), but also provision of services that minimize risks of potentially avoidable transfers to acute care.

Often, nursing home residents lack advance directives that would assist them at the end of life. When a resident, without an advanced directive, suffers a worsening of their clinical condition, a cascade of care is put into motion and can trigger unwanted emergency room visits and admissions, which can lead to other complications. The provision of palliative care services for SNF residents supports person-directed care in a proactive way to honor the patient and their choices.

Alliant Quality, in partnership with SNFs and palliative care organizations, will develop customized education and learning sessions for SNF leaders to better understand palliative care and its beneficial role for the residents whom they are caring for each day. This educational offering will be pilot-tested in central North Carolina with SNFs who are interested in this Special Innovation Project offered through the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.

Participating SNFs will have the opportunity to:

• Receive free training programs designed to improve their SNF staff competency and knowledge related to end-of-life care
• Join a learning network with experts on palliative care in the SNF setting
• Partner with palliative care providers in order to improve the quality of life of their residents
• Implement low-burden measurement strategies that monitor resident and family satisfaction with end-of-life care
• Improve rates of avoidable acute care transfers and hospital admission and readmission rates

For more information, contact:
Jennifer Judson RN, BSN
Project Lead, Palliative Care
Office: (678) 527-3473
Jennifer.Judson@alliantquality.org

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Save 15% on AHCA’s Long Term Care Survey Phase II edition during cyber week! Order the Long Term Care Survey Phase II edition, using promo code CYBER and save 15% this week only. The recently released Phase II edition of the Long Term Care Survey includes all the updates from Phase I and the Phase II of CMS’ three-phase implementation plan that is set to take place over the next several years. It includes completely new F-tag numbers, updated guidance, and some revised regulatory language. The newest updates and revisions are now in effect. With more than 800 pages of new content, it is imperative that every center have a copy!

To order, visit http://www.AHCApublications.org or call (800) 321-0343. Fax orders may also be placed at (800) 869-5605.

AHCA MEMBER PRICING
Softbound (Product# 6775-2017): $64.95
Binder (Product# 6775N-2017): $85.95
E-Book (Product# 6775E-2017): $129.95

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This DVD, Mobility and Safe Movement of the Elderly, Improving Your Skills to Prevent Injuries and Reduce Falls, by Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L., FOTA, Dementia Care & Training Specialist, was developed in conjunction with Wake Allied Health Education Center, Durham Technical Community College and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Office of Information Systems. The content is formatted in separate segments in order to customize the delivery of content to your learning objective. Handouts developed by Teepa accompany each video and may be reproduced. To order, e-mail your request to Donna Snyder at donnas@nchcfa.org. The price is $35.00 (tax and shipping included).

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‘Super’ event for seniors scores big: Village 99ers vs. Groundhogs

McKnight’s Article

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Six generations back, you have 64 great-great-great-grandparents.

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