Five-Star Quality Rating System

On December 18, 2008, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented the Five-Star Program. This system has already created a lot of confusion in the industry. The basis for the program is information from:

• Annual Surveys -three most recent surveys and revisits
• Staffing - Acuity Adjusted
• Quality Measures - 10 of 19 utilized for comparison

Although national provider groups have expressed their concerns about the validity and the value of the information in assessing quality provided in facility, we need to understand what the public is seeing. You need to learn all the details of this new system. The following resources are available:

Technical User Guide: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/CertificationandCompliance/Downloads/usersguide.pdf

Nursing Home Compare Website:

www.medicare.gov/NHCompare

Watch for news of a Boyer & Associates training session coming soon on the Five-Star Nursing Home Rating System. In the mean time, please call Pat Boyer with any questions. Boyer & Associates, LLC has an acuity based staffing model available for facilities.

Boyer Development Center Open House

Our Open House in November was a great success. We had lots of visitors to our new training center and lots of food and refreshments. We kicked off our Development Center with our first workshop on Investigations with 16 participants. We have since had a successful first Web Ex session. Our 2009 1st quarter schedule is now posted and ready to go! We are so excited about our new educational offerings and look forward to working with facilities across the country. Let us know what you think, give us suggestions of workshops you'd like to see and join us in a session soon. Pat