MDS Alert

MDS Accuracy:

Find Out What DAVE 2 Has Been Up To

On-site nurse reviewers have already gleaned these common themes.

DAVE 2 nurse reviewers have been on-site in randomly selected nursing facilities since April. And they have some preliminary "lessons learned" to share with everyone doing the MDS, according to David Malitz, PhD, who gave an update at a recent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services-sponsored SNF/Long-Term Care Open Door Forum on DAVE 2's recent doings and findings.

Top of the list: Facilities need to "dust off" those RAI manuals and make sure to download the latest version, advised nurse Ann Stenard, who is in charge of the on-site DAVE 2 nurse reviewers. When on-site reviewers discover a problem or issue and talk with nursing home staff, most staff self report they had not read the manual in years or hadn't kept it up to date, according to Stenard, speaking at the SNF ODF.

Check often for the latest RAI manual updates at
www.cms.hhs.gov/NursingHomeQualityInits/20_NHQIMDS20.asp#TopOfPagewww.cms.gov.

To stay a step ahead of DAVE 2, consider these two strategies:

1. Watch out for mistakes if your MDS software carries assessment information forward from one MDS to the next. Reviewers are finding instances where staff using that software function accidentally skipped an MDS item -- or don't validate that it needed to be changed from one assessment to the next.

2. Stay focused on the RAI manual definitions for ADL assistance. For example, DAVE 2 reviewers are finding that some facilities confuse therapy terminology with the RAI manual definitions.

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