

To read CMS’s announcement about this new policy, click here. CMS hopes to encourage facilities to hire more weekend staff by adding weekend staff numbers to the nursing home rating system. With regard to weekend staffing, CMS acknowledged that consumers may not realize that nursing home staffing levels can vary on weekends.
CMS NURSING HOME COMPARE QUALITY MEASURES MANUAL
The staff’s familiarity with the facility’s policies and procedures as well as more steady leadership and direction may also affect staff turnover and nursing home quality. The MDS 3.0 Quality Measures User’s Manual (v6.0) states that the long-stay antipsychotic measure as reported on Nursing Home Compare will replace the current antipsychotic measure in the CASPER. In adding the information, CMS noted in a memo that the correlation between nursing home quality and turnover may be because “facilities with lower nurse turnover may have more staff that are familiar with each resident’s condition and may therefore be more able to identify a resident’s change in condition sooner.” The staff may be better able to prevent the resident from falling, getting an infection, or requiring hospitalization, all of which affect a nursing home’s quality rating.

Staff Turnover: The percent of nursing staff and number of administrators that stopped working at the nursing home over a 12-month period.ĬMS will begin adding the information to the Care Compare website in January and it will be incorporated into the rating system in July 2022.Weekend Staffing: The level of total nurse and registered nurse staffing on weekends provided by each nursing home over a quarter.Recognizing the problem, CMS announced that it would begin posting the following information for each nursing home on its website: In addition, CMS found that lower turnover is often correlated to high nursing home ratings. The set of quality measures (QMs) located on Nursing Home Compare describe the quality of care provided in nursing homes.
CMS NURSING HOME COMPARE QUALITY MEASURES UPDATE
A study by the journal Health Affairs found that the turnover among nursing staff was 94 percent in 20 and mean turnover rates were as high as 140.7 percent among registered nurses, 129.1percent among certified nursing aides and 114.1 percent among licensed practical nurses. To provide further value and remain consistent with CMSsMeaningful Measures initiative,4 the April 2019 Nursing Home Compare update includes adding measures of. Nursing homes have been plagued by chronic understaffing and high turnover rates for years, and this problem has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
