In the second part of our series, Hot Topics for outpatient settings will be reviewed including: medication management, disinfection and high-level sterilization, staff competency, and Rural Health Center standards.
Operational Assessments pinpoint the internal strengths and weaknesses of healthcare organizations, as well as the external opportunities and threats. These assessments can provide a wealth of actionable in information for healthcare leaders to pursue to optimize the performance of their organization.
Maintaining compliance with the Conditions of Participation is the goal of every organization. The webinar will focus on survey hot topics and strategies for compliance including: Infection Control, High-Level Disinfection, Restraints, Staff competency, Medical Staff credentialing, National Patient Safety Goals, and the new TJC standards for diversity.
How to understand the needs of your hospital/practice when it comes to choosing an efficient EHR System, best practices for navigating the confusing process of selecting an EHR System, and what to look for/benefits of a quality EHR System.
The COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately proven to be fertile ground for compliance issues. Prosecuting fraud and abuse for inappropriate use of governmental funds continues to be a primary enforcement tool. This session will explore recent trends and discuss lessons learned to protect against the associated risks.
HealthTech is offering two (2) Swing Bed Certification courses, Swing Bed Basics and Swing Bed Beyond Basics. Each course has a total of six modules and is designed to provide the elements of a successful Swing Bed program. The webinar will provide a brief overview of each module and how to sign up for the course.
The 2023 Physician Fee Schedules has a few changes for care coordination – specifically there are some additional service lines available to providers and definitions have been updated and clarified. Join us for this Webinar to gain an overview of all of the care coordination opportunities and receive a refresher on the elements of the various programs and service lines. If you have not yet started your care coordination program – now is the time! If you are just looking for a refresher – either way - join us for this webinar
Quality, Risk, and Compliance are independent programs that are designed to advance safety, increase availability, and improve outcomes. The lines between these three programs often become blurred leaving employees unsure of where to report concerns. This webinar brings the similarities and differences between these programs into focus thereby increasing incident reporting and improving the attainment of goals.
Almost every hospital has a goal of increasing Swing Bed volume. Volume depends on a variety of factors, some of which are under the hospital’s control and some which are not. The webinar will provide tools for how to complete a 360 degree assessment of your Swing Bed program and develop a comprehensive plan for growth. The webinar will discuss the importance of developing admission criteria, ensuring a timely response to referrals, managing length of stay and measuring outcomes.
Transitional Care Management has been a misunderstood process. The goal of an effective TCM process is to ensure that patients being discharged from acute, skilled, or observation care are set up for success and avoid readmission. Hospitals are penalized for readmissions and primary care providers are rewarded with additional revenue to perform TCM services for 30 days. This apparent mismatch of the carrot and the stick has led to confusion on where TCM should begin and who is ultimately responsible to ensure an effect process.
Although Swing Beds have been around for many years, hospitals continue to struggle with understanding and meeting the regulatory requirements. One of the reasons is that Swing Beds have regulatory requirements that are more closely aligned with care in a skilled nursing facility than acute care, and it can be hard for staff and providers to navigate the differences successfully.
Operational Assessments pinpoint the internal strengths and weaknesses of healthcare organizations, as well as the external opportunities and threats. Attendees will gain an understanding of the positive impact an operational assessment can have on the bottom line of healthcare organizations, and will become aware of what a high quality operational assessment should entail.
The right internal recruiting program can be a very powerful tool to ensure equity at all levels. It can also be a very important aspect of retention. Your employees want to know that they can advance. Most often, when we think about the hiring process and increasing diversity, we seem to think of it only as an external experience with a focus on external candidate pools and hiring data. This webinar is to help to broaden the scope so those same policies, practices, and behaviors that increase diversity in the external hiring process also help ensure representation at higher levels within your workplace.
The regulatory requirements for Swing Bed are included in Appendix W (Critical Access Hospitals: February 2020), Appendix A (PPS Hospitals: February 2020), Appendix PP (Long Term Care Facilities: November 2017), and the Medicare Benefits Manual Chapter 8 (August 2021). Navigating the regulatory requirements can be challenging, but maintaining compliance can be even more so. The webinar will provide an overview of regulatory requirements from pre-admission thru discharge including applicable requirements in Appendix PP, and strategies for maintaining compliance.
All care management services such as Chronic Care Management, Behavioral Health Integration, Principal Care Management, and Remote Physiological Monitoring all require some form of care planning. In these care management services; the key is to ensure that the care plan is patient centered and in patient friendly language.
Ever wonder how the Swing Bed patient status came to be? Understanding the evolution of the program will lead to a better understanding of the program, improving compliance with CMS requirements. This webinar will look at the developmental timeline of Swing Bed status, the potential impact the status has on individuals, hospitals, and the community, and review regulatory requirements.
Data, data, data – it is everywhere, but what do we do with it? Business Intelligence (BI) technology has made significant advances over the last few years, making it much easier and more practical to implement a BI platform in hospitals of all sizes. The value of implementing a BI platform creates significant value that is not available from the EHR platform.
The 2022 Physician Fee Schedules has expanded the opportunities for Principal Care Management. There have been increases in the reimbursements and additional time codes added for this service. Does the incorporation of Principal Care Management into your care coordination program allow you to enroll additional patients?
Risk assessment is a key component of recent compliance program guidance from the OIG and DOJ. Using periodic risk assessment to develop work, audit, and education plans will help you to prioritize your compliance program activity.
Workplace violence in hospitals is a growing and serious problem. Healthcare workers have a much higher exposure rate than other industries to workplace violence that often results in injuries.
The webinar will provide an overview of the regulatory standards for Rural Health Clinics Appendix G, which were last updated in February of 2020.
Most Hospitals with a Swing Bed program are interested in increasing volume. So why is it so hard? Is it the competition? Internal systems? Lack of support by providers or staff? Lack of resources?
Surveyors are on the road again and conducting onsite surveys. Infection Control, of course, remains key.
The Swing Bed regulatory requirements do not have interpretative guidelines – and only refer to Appendix PP which are the standards for Long Term Care.
Although swing beds have been around for a long time, there continues to be confusion about how to meet swing bed regulatory requirements.
CMS and Joint Commission are expanding their accreditation life safety surveys to include hospital clinics and hospital-owned physician offices. In the past, nurse surveyors and sometimes physicians would visit those areas, but focused on infection control and patient care, with only a few minor recommendations related to the building.
The keys to a successful quality program are collecting, analyzing, and reporting data. The key questions to ask are: Is all the data being collected necessary? Are sample sizes appropriate? Most importantly, is the data making a difference in improving outcomes?
If we think about service lines, surgical services, cardiac services, trauma services, cancer services or pediatric services, may come to mind. But why not swing bed? For most rural hospitals, swing bed services provide a significant benefit to the community by providing skilled care close to home, and a significant revenue source for the hospital.
Learn to identify safety issues from a former Joint Commission Life Safety Surveyor through pictures from surveys performed over the last 30 years. These pictures are from small and large medical facilities around the country and demonstrate the need to continually improve your hospital’s safety.
Compliance with Swing Bed regulatory requirements continues to be a challenge for most organizations. The reasons are varied but often it has to do with staff difficulty in differentiating between an acute level of care and a skilled level of care. Other challenges may include the multi-disciplinary assessment, plan of care, and discharge requirements.
The CMS deadline for Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) to implement a QAPI program is March 30, 2021. Even though CMS has not published the standards in the Conditions of Participation (CoPs), the deadline is fast approaching.
Keeping your swing bed program “survey ready” is every hospital’s goal. But, it can be difficult, especially with the recent changes in swing bed regulations that were released by CMS in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Swing bed regulatory requirements continue to be confusing or difficult to implement for many hospitals. This occurs in part because the requirements for acute patients are different than those for a swing bed patient, including requirements for admission, assessment, care planning and discharge.
The Social Security Act permits certain small, rural hospitals to enter into a swing bed agreement under which the hospital or critical access hospital (CAH) can use its beds, as needed, to provide either acute or skilled nursing care. Medicare Part A, the hospital insurance program, covers post-hospital extended care services furnished in a swing bed.
Recent reimbursement methodology changes have a focused point of importance but none more than the relationship of active diagnoses, which affects both admission decisions and services provided.
On September 30, 2019, CMS issued major regulatory changes for hospitals and critical access hospitals, the majority of which were effective the end of November. The new regulations include changes to the swing bed regulatory requirements, including elimination of the requirement for an activities assessment by a qualified professional.
We provided a webinar last year that focused on recurring questions about swing bed. So, back by popular demand, an updated edition of “Just the Questions”.
HealthTechS3 has provided numerous swing bed webinars over the last several years. For this webinar we’re going “back to basics.”
The revisions to Swing Bed regulatory requirements in October of 2018 required the implementation of Trauma-Informed care.
The first of our two-part series will focus on ways to improve your swing bed program from both the organization and resident’s perspective.