The march toward a new Minimum Data Set (MDS) protocol continues, with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) releasing the full complement of draft item sets.
With this release on Dec. 23, CMS made good on a previous promise to get these complete draft item sets out in 2022. The agency plans to release the final version of MDS items sets in early 2023. MDS 3.0 v1.18.11 is slated to take effect on Oct. 1, 2023.
In addition to the nine item sets, CMS released a change document detailing which MDS items are contained within each set.
CMS previously released the draft comprehensive data set, in September 2022. That release showed, among other potentially “transformative” changes, the deletion of Section G.
The draft item sets released on Dec. 23 include “minor clerical and/or instructional changes,” Joel VanEaton, EVP of PAC regulatory affairs and education at Broad River Rehab, told Skilled Nursing News in an email.
In a blog post, VanEaton listed the specific items with changes.
A revised RAI manual and training resources should be forthcoming in the second quarter of 2023, CMS officials said on a recent Open Door Forum call.
The shift in MDS processes comes at a tough time, given the acute staffing crunch still being experienced across the skilled nursing sector. As with many other positions, MDS coordinators have been affected. One issue is MDS coordinators being pulled into direct patient care on the floor, compromising their focus on MDS-related work.
“We always say that we need to hold our MDS coordinators to a different standard which means they can’t be on call unless it’s adamantly an emergency because they are our moneymakers,” Georgie Faulk-Sherwood, vice president of clinical reimbursement for Focused Post Acute Care Partners, said last May at SNN’s Clinical Executive Conference in Chicago. “They need to be in the community, they need to be assessing those residents because they are making your money.”
While there are still unanswered questions about how the MDS transition will play out, particularly with regard to losing Section G, skilled nursing professionals have said that providers must start preparing for the change as soon as possible by reviewing the drafts that are available.
“October 2023 will be here before you know it. No time like the present,” VanEaton wrote in his latest blog post.
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