Long-Term Care Survey Alert

Survey News To Use

Ready for DAVE 2? Just when facilities thought DAVE was a done deal, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced round two for for the computerized MDS data integrity initiative. CMS has signed a contract with Abt Associates to run the program. Abt will also be working with two of the quality improvement organizations in the follow-up, according to information presented by a CMS representative at a recent SNF Open Door Forum.

The plan to date calls for a DAVE team to visit about 60 randomly selected facilities this spring, according to the forum. A facility's odds of getting tapped for an onsite visit will be proportional to its volume of MDS assessments, said the CMS representative.

The DAVE 2 project will build on the findings of the original DAVE program, which uncovered MDS coding problems in a number of areas, including activities of daily living, rehab therapies, diagnoses, medications, dehydration and pain. CMS plans to look at the DAVE 2 findings at year's end and make some decisions going forward. The agency is interested in the impact of MDS discrepancies on quality indicators/measures, RUG classifications and care planning.

Facilities can stay on top of their QIs/QM reports on a weekly basis. You don't have to wait until the first Monday of each month to request your QI/QM reports. The MDS-generated quality outcomes are actually calculated early every Monday morning, according to information from the QIES Technical Support Office and reiterated during a recent SNF Open Door Forum.

Facilities may thus pull their  reports as soon as they are ready each week, if they wish. "The 'Data was calculated on' date field on the CASPER Reports Submit page will display the last date that the data was calculated," states the information posted at www.qtso.com.

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