July 2018: LTC Newsletter

Posted on July 28, 2018

T
he Office of Inspector General (OIG) Work Plan has long been a source used by

hospital compliance officers to help identify risks and develop audit plans. Fol-
lowing the issuance of the revised CMS guidelines, long-term care fa-
cilities are fine-tuning their programs to prepare for the November

2019 Compliance Program deadlines.

July 2018: Compliance Newsletter

Posted on July 28, 2018

The use of an Advanced Beneficiary Notice (ABN) remains a source of confusion for
many providers. As such, there are still facilities that do not have processes in place to
ensure the use of ABN’s. In some cases, ABN’s are not issued at all, or

blanket ABN’s are provided for all services; which is a practice that is ille-
gal.

June 2018: Compliance Newsletter

Posted on June 27, 2018

On June 1, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its semiannual report to congress.

The report covers a six-month period, October 2017 – March 2018. The report highlights ac-
complishments, participation in Congressional hearings and updates related to oversight

activities. In the reports opening message, Inspector General, Daniel Levinson, highlighted

the department’s work towards combating the opioid crisis, the need to improve cyberse-
curity across four Health and Human Services Departments and their work in the area of en-
suring that those in foster care and group homes receive high-quality services.

June 2018: LTC Newsletter

Posted on June 27, 2018

Twenty-nine states have legalized marijuana for medical use and nine states have legalized
marijuana for recreational use for those individuals 21 years of age or older.1 These changes
have led many industries to remove marijuana from their drug screens citing concerns over
staffing if workers who test positive are fired.2 Will healthcare facilities continue to drug test
employees in states where marijuana has been legalized?

May 2018: Compliance Newsletter

Posted on May 25, 2018

Compliance, quality, and risk have traditionally been areas of confusion. There are so many
areas of crossover it can be difficult to determine the separation between them and in some
cases, there is no separation. This can be especially difficult in facilities that have separate
compliance, quality and risk departments.

May 2018: LTC Newsletter

Posted on May 24, 2018

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases a weekly Morbidity and Mor-
tality Report. Included in the May 11, 2018 report was statistics related to deaths from falls

among persons ≥65 from 2007-2016. The CDC indicated in their report that falls account for
the largest percentage of deaths from unintentional injuries which is the seventh leading
cause of death in older adults.1

May C4 Newsletter

Posted on May 13, 2018

Do you believe that you are prepared and ready each day
to receive the message that surveyors are at your front
door or is survey readiness one of the things that cause
you sleepless nights?

April 2018: Compliance Newsletter

Posted on May 03, 2018

The development and implementation of physician contracts can be extremely complicat-
ed. When developing these contracts, the Stark Laws and Anti-kickback statutes have to be

taken into consideration. The Stark Law was enacted almost 30 years ago and was devel-
oped to remove financial motivations for physicians to order unnecessary testing, and to con-
trol overall health care costs.

April 2018: LTC Newsletter

Posted on May 03, 2018

In 2016, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS)
performed an overhaul of long-term care (LTC) requirements.
Due to the significant number of changes and the time needed

to become compliant, CMS developed a phased implementa-
tion approach. There are three implementation deadlines. The

first, November 28, 2016 included those changes that were simple

to implement.

April 2018: Clinical Connection

Posted on April 10, 2018

It is a known fact that the best teams achieve greater results and do better than others. In a

recent two-year study of 200 teams completed by Google, they tried to identify what moti-
vates the most effective teams and what the character traits and skills are that make up these

teams.