Star Ratings and PDPM – A Proposal

UPDATE: As of today (6-25-2018) McKnight’s is reporting that CMS is including all PBJ information to the nursing home compare website. I consider this progress! The current star rating system we use for skilled nursing is not compatible with PDPM. The reason for this is that staffing ratings depend upon expected nursing hours, which are… Continue reading Star Ratings and PDPM – A Proposal

Star Ratings – Some Stats

Star Ratings Let’s talk about star ratings. I know a lot of people in skilled nursing tell me they don’t like star ratings. Most say the star ratings are flawed and can be misleading. I agree that star ratings aren’t perfect, but they aren’t designed for skilled nursing insiders; they are designed to help people… Continue reading Star Ratings – Some Stats

PDPM Non-Therapy Ancillary Pay

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PDPM and Non-Therapy Ancillaries The non-therapy ancillary (NTA) part of the patient driven payment model (PDPM) is considered by most people I’ve talked to as being better than what we’re currently doing. It more accurately accounts for expenses and isn’t overshadowed by therapy.  In this post I’m going to take a deeper look at it… Continue reading PDPM Non-Therapy Ancillary Pay

PDPM, Let’s Do Some Math…

PDPM (Patient Driven Payment Model) aka RCS v2, aka RCS lite, aka Provider Driven Payment Model (my personal favorite), aka the worst thing ever for therapy, etc. I remember when PPS (Perspective Payment System) came and many thought this was the worst thing ever for therapy.  Many companies declared bankruptcy. (The one I worked for… Continue reading PDPM, Let’s Do Some Math…

PDPM – Section GG Functional Scores By State (& County!)

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The enhanced provider specific file for PDPM released by CMS has given us an unusual opportunity to study and understand things going on in our industry in a much more timely manner than we’re accustomed to. Let’s hope this trend continues. In this post we’re going to be looking at the new functional scoring technique… Continue reading PDPM – Section GG Functional Scores By State (& County!)

PDPM – Nursing Categories

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CMS has released a provider specific impact analysis for PDPM using 2017 data. There’s a lot to analyze and that takes time. However, one interesting question we can answer with the data is something along the lines of “What would happen if all the therapy minutes disappeared?”  (Note: Since CMS still refers to the nursing… Continue reading PDPM – Nursing Categories

PDPM Calculator Available!

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We’ve just released the PDPM Calculator! (We’ve also retired the RCS-1 Calculator since that proposal is effectively retired. You can still access that calculator here if you want to compare or you’re feeling nostalgic.) Why build a PDPM calculator when CMS released their own Excel-based grouper tool? We felt like the Excel tool was a… Continue reading PDPM Calculator Available!