The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)’s value incentive program (VIP) seeks to standardize the many value-based purchasing programs that are available to different care settings, including skilled nursing. In its most recent report on Medicare payment policy, MedPAC devoted a chapter to the design of a VIP for post-acute care (PAC) in order to highlight […]
Health Affairs
Nursing homes were among the main health care providers to drive spending growth in 2020, along with hospitals and physicians, contributing to a 9.7% increase to reach $4.1 trillion. The acceleration in spending was caused by a 36% increase in federal expenditures, according to a report published by peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs, in response to […]
The direct care worker occupation has seen substantial growth in recent years, rising from three million workers in 2009 to 4.6 million workers in 2019, but new analysis shows that most of that growth can be attributed to home care. Nationally, the home care workforce has had a more than twofold increase since 2009, while […]
Operators that had more staff coming in and out of a skilled nursing facility, while maintaining comparable direct care hours to those with less staff, had increased susceptibility to COVID outbreaks last year, according to a report released by public policy journal Health Affairs. Findings are interestingly at odds with industry initiatives to add more […]
Skilled nursing facilities will need solutions to better retain and attract operational staff like New York-based New Jewish Home’s Geriatric Career Development program. Nevertheless experts say that investment in a universal direct care workforce may be needed. The direct care workforce, which includes certified nursing assistants (CNAs) in nursing homes, typically provide between 60-to-80% of […]
Public policy journal Health Affairs this month reported a modest decline in nursing home staffing levels for the majority of 2020, rather than a drastic shortage in staff suggested by various news reports over the course of the year. Taking data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) system, Health […]
Nursing homes in New York with unionized workforces had lower mortality rates from COVID-19, as well as greater access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and lower COVID-19 infection rates, according to a new study released September 10 in the journal Health Affairs. Specifically, health care unions in nursing homes were associated with a 1.29 percentage […]
More than one in five nursing homes reported “severe” shortfalls of both personal protective equipment (PPE) and staffing, a new study published in the journal Health Affairs found — and those shortages did not meaningfully improve from May to July. The study is scheduled for publication in a later print edition of the journal, with […]
In communities where the peak of the illness caused by the novel coronavirus hasn’t yet arrived, authorities should start designating specific skilled nursing facilities as specialized COVID-19 facilities to ease hospital capacity, according to a Wednesday essay in the journal Health Affairs. And as they look to make those designations, authorities should not wait on […]
A federal overhaul to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), implemented late in 2018, has led to an increase in the number of accountable care organizations (ACOs) taking on downside risk. The redesign of the program, dubbed “Pathways to Success,” generally required new ACOs to take accountability for spending increases after two years; previously ACOs […]
Commercial insurance payers spend significantly less on post-acute and skilled nursing care — with much shorter SNF stays — compared with Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements. But even though Medicare pays more for post-acute care and SNF stays, there are no significant differences in readmission rates — suggesting that there may not be any clinical benefits to […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) overhaul of the Medicare Shared Savings Program is paying off in the form of greater accountability and more risk-taking, CMS administrator Seema Verma wrote in a blog post published Wednesday in Health Affairs. The post came as part of an announcement about accountable care organization (ACO) participation […]
The Medicare Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program, which distributed its first round of incentives and penalties on October 1 of last year, has a goal of rewarding high-quality skilled nursing care by tying Medicare payments to performance. In that round, almost three-quarters of SNFs saw penalties. And a new study published this month in the journal […]
While governments and payers increasingly incentivize the provision of long-term care at home instead of in skilled nursing facilities, data about outcomes remains few and far between — with one group of researchers finding that some high-acuity patients fare worse in the community setting. Based on 2012 claims data, a team from the University of […]
The gulf between self-reported and payroll-based staffing records for nursing homes continues to widen, with a new study showing a reality that vastly differs from government expectations. The amount of registered nurse (RN) coverage falls well below the standards set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for most skilled nursing facilities in the […]
]With the increased premium placed on preventing rehospitalizations from skilled nursing facilities, timely interventions from a doctor can potentially make a major difference. Between 2012 and 2014, about 10.4% of residents did not see a physician at all during their time in the skilled nursing facility, according to a study published Monday in the journal […]
The thorny relationship among the skilled nursing industry, consumer advocates, and regulators could be actively thwarting efforts at improving nursing home quality, one expert argued. “In making their respective cases, stakeholders have expressed divergent views about the current state of nursing home quality and, more specifically, the effectiveness of regulatory oversight efforts,” David Stevenson, an associate professor […]
Hospitals that participated in Medicare’s bundled-payment initiatives were particularly focused on getting patients home first and foremost, rather than sending them to skilled nursing facilities, according to a new study published in Health Affairs. That came as a surprise to the researchers, Jane Zhu of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania […]
As skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes face increasing pressure to avoid rehospitalizations, they can draw some lessons from a study from Yale and the Scripps Gerontology Institute that examined the impact of cross-sectoral partnerships on preventable health care spending. Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) coordinate social services for older adults across the U.S. and regularly work […]
Fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare has been increasingly de-emphasized in favor of newer payment models such as Medicare Advantage (MA), but a new study in the journal Health Affairs suggests that FFS might provide better skilled-nursing choices for its beneficiaries. “Even after accounting for the quality of nursing homes in a geographic area and the quality of Medicare Advantage […]
Subscribe
Receive industry updates and breaking news from SNN.