The holidays are here and everyone is merry. Oh wait, maybe everyone isn’t merry! Seasonal depression is very common in all age groups, but depression in seniors is associated with increased falls and falls with injury.

It appears that Medicare/CMS is planning to start a game with our skilled therapy services. What does this mean? Basically it means that you as a person or resident will not be important, but rather you as a diagnosis will drive the care Medicare will pay for.

If you're familiar with DRGs, you will recall the uproar that happened when a patient’s diagnosis was the only driver of hospitalization, care, and payment. This is similar to that payment model.

I was talking to a prospective client recently—a Director of Nursing for a Skilled Nursing Facility with about 130 residents. I was trying to get a feel for how they work and whether or not QA Reader would be a good fit for them.

I asked my normal questions: how many residents, how do they currently report incidents (paper or in an electronic health record), how do they keep track of incidents, frequent fallers, potentially serious events, etc. As we were talking, the DON suddenly blurted out, “Incident reports are a waste of time!”