Posted on Thursday, July 18, 2019 4:23 PM
Last week, CMS issued a proposed rule: “Medicare & Medicaid Programs; Requirements for Long-Term Care Facilities: Regulatory Provisions to Promote Efficiency and Transparency.” The proposed rule would remove requirements for participation identified as unnecessary, obsolete, or excessively burdensome on long-term care (LTC) facilities. The rule is part of the agency’s five-part approach to ensuring a high-quality LTC facility system that focuses on strengthening requirements for such facilities, working with states to enforce statutory and regulatory requirements, increasing transparency of facility performance, and promoting improved health outcomes for facility residents. CMS expects the provisions in the rule, if finalized, to achieve $616 million in savings annually for these facilities.
“As part of the five-part approach, this proposed rule would, among other provisions:
- Reduce the frequency that LTC facilities are required to conduct a facility assessment.
- Allow LTC facilities the flexibility to streamline their compliance and ethics programs.
- Reduce the requirements for individuals responsible for the compliance and ethics program and reduce the frequency for the program’s review.
- Increase flexibility by providing that those who have performed as the director of food and nutrition services for a minimum of two years by allowing them to continue doing so without obtaining additional certification. Newly hired directors of food and nutrition services or those with less than two years of experience would need to complete, at a minimum, a course in food safety and management.
- Allow facilities greater flexibility in tailoring their Quality Assurance Program Improvement (QAPI) program to the specific needs of their individual facility by eliminating prescriptive requirements.
- Update Informal Dispute Resolution (and independent process) by adding timeframes on process, and increased provider transparency.”
Click here for the full press release.
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