Changes Coming to the Nursing Home Compare Website

CMS will soon be updating the Nursing Home Compare website on April 23, 2011 and on July 21, 2011. Section 6103 of the Affordable Care Act requires that a wide variety of new information be posted on Nursing Home Compare at different time intervals. On April 23, CMS will make three changes to Nursing Home Compare. The first change will be to add information to allow consumers to more directly file complaints about nursing homes with State Survey Agencies. CMS is also adding a standardized complaint form that consumers can use in cases where they prefer to submit a complaint by fax. The second change that will take place on April 23 is to add a more visible consumer rights section that clearly spells out resident and consumer rights and provides more information about courses of action that consumers can take if they feel that their rights are being violated. This section will also have information on how to choose a nursing home and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program. In July 2011, CMS will make an additional change to Nursing Home Compare to display information for each nursing home about the number of substantiated complaints received and about the number of enforcement actions (specifically Civil Money Penalties and Denials of Payment for New Admissions) that have been levied.

Finally, in addition to changes mandated by the Affordable Care Act, on April 23 CMS will "freeze" quality measure data and the five star quality measure ratings currently on the website for a period of six months. Historically, CMS has updated quality measure data each quarter. However, new MDS 3.0 derived quality measure data are not yet available for display, so CMS will retain the current QM scores and star ratings until October 2011. CMS anticipates that new MDS 3.0 QM data will be available in early 2012. CMS is soliciting comments on these website changes. For a copy of the survey and certification letter, click here.

For questions or additional information, contact Lori McLaughlin at lmclaughlin@kdlegal.com or 219-227-6075.