The IMPACT Act was a bipartisan bill that was passed in September of 2014 and signed into law in October by President Obama. The act requires standardized resident assessment data that will be uniform.
The goal is to:
- Promote quality care and improved outcomes
- Compare data across post-acute care
- Improve discharge planning
- Enable the exchangeability or interoperability of information and data
- Facilitate coordinated care
Some of the driving forces behind the IMPACT Act include purposes such as:
- Improving Medicare beneficiary outcomes
- Enabling provider access to information to facilitate coordinated care
- Enabling comparable data and quality across post-acute care settings
- Improving hospital and post-acute care discharge planning
- Facilitating research using comparable data
So you ask, why the attention on post-acute care? Shocking, but it's directly related to escalating costs within post-acute care and a lack of standardized data across post-acute care provider types. It will also identify goals for establishing payment rates according to the individual characteristics of the person and not the care setting.
The SNF Quality Reporting Program
It's important to note that in response to the reporting requirements under the Act, CMS established the SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) and its quality reporting requirements in the FY 2016 SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS) final rule. Per the status, SNFs that do not submit the required quality measures data may receive a two-percentage point reduction to their annual payment update (APU) for the applicable payment year. This program is effective October 1, 2016.
Policies Finalized in SNF PPS FY 2016 Final Rule
These are the QRP policies that go into effect with the PPS FY 2016 final rule:
- Participation/Timing for New SNFs:
- Data collection timelines and requirements for the FY 2018 payment determination and subsequent years
- Data completion threshold
- Exception and extension requirements
- Reconsideration and Appeals procedures:
- Public display of quality data
In the FY 2016 SNF PPS final rule, three quality measures affecting FY 2018 payment determination were finalized for adoption into the SNF QRP. All three of these quality measures use assessment data from the MDS.
These three quality measures include:
- Percent of residents experiencing one or more falls with major injury (long-stay)
- Percent of residents with pressure ulcers (injury) that are new or worsened
- Percent of long-term care residents with an admission and discharge functional assessment and a care plan that addresses function
Information about item coding can be found at the CMS website.
Tune in next week for more information on the new MDS requirements for Section GG!
Next Steps
- Learn more about the SNF Quality Reporting Program
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- See QA Reader in action - request a live demo
