Nursing home operators call it low occupancy. Medicare insiders call it a declining census. Economists call it excess capacity.
Additional staffing metrics point to organizational stability
By
Steven Littlehale
Mar 04, 2022
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, through its consumer‐facing website, has made additional nursing home staffing data available. Doing so during a public health emergency, when the industry...
Stars upon thars
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 23, 2015
It’s notoriously difficult, not to mention foolish, to try to predict the future of long-term care in America. In all of our nation’s recorded history, only one man can lay claim to true prescience...
Which matters most: Social media or Five-Star?
By
Steven Littlehale
May 27, 2022
Recently my colleague Ken Kelley, MS, OTR/L, RAC-CT, a clinical consultant/reimbursement specialist, posited something about Five-Star ratings that I hadn’t considered. He suggested that, in general,...
Five-Star is anything but frozen
By
Steven Littlehale
Dec 13, 2017
The day after Thanksgiving, CMS further defined its intensions with the Five-Star Quality Rating System; more specifically how the new survey process and derivative data will be used in its calculation...
The Five-Star Quality Rating System’s impact on insurance premiums — and how to address them
By
Ben Newman
Feb 27, 2023
For nearly 15 years, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Five-Star Quality Rating System for long-term care facilities has been a single source of truth for multiple parties. Consumers...
Lots to learn with new Five-Star
By
Steven Littlehale
Jul 22, 2022
On a recent flight, I sat next to an attorney whose principal focus was compliance. It turned out that we were both on our way to speak at events in the same popular Florida conference destination. She...
Post-acute payment bundling system appears ominous
By
Liza Berger
May 21, 2009
Nursing homes have cause to worry about the prospect of a Medicare post-acute payment bundling system. If it pans out, facilities may end up on the losing side of the equation. That is just one of my takeaways...