The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published new Five-Star rankings on its Nursing Home Compare (NHC) website this week. The ratings reflect new metrics and methodological changes that expand the quality measure component of the system.

Featured on the Nursing Home Compare website, the ratings are based on three components—survey data, staffing information, and quality metrics—and reported by a Minimum Data Set (MDS) and claims-based system. The quality and overall star ratings of skilled nursing centers will reflect the following new changes:

• The addition of five new measures;
• Expansion of the timeframe for determining the quality metric from a three to four quarter average, and;
• Changing the scoring on the Activities of Daily Living measure from a state ranking to a national ranking.

On July 28, 2016 AHCA hosted a webinar that walked through these new changes.  Members can access the recorded webinar and the following resources on the Five-Star achancalED website.

The AHCA/NCAL Quality Initiative website here has information and tools to help members achieve the measurable goals aligned with Five-Star.  The Association has also kicked off its new 8-part webcast series designed to assist members with using the Quality Initiative to achieve success. For more information, click here.

And be sure to use AHCA’s members-only LTC Trend Tracker here to run reports that capture your Five-Star and Quality Measure (QM) rates.