DOH Provider Association Quarterly Meeting
LeadingAge NY staff met with the Department of Health (DOH) on Thurs., July 18th as part of the DOH and provider association quarterly meetings.
DOH is looking at the length of the nursing home survey and trying to shorten it to four to five days for larger facilities and three days for smaller facilities. The newness of the process and the hiring of new survey staff have resulted in some surveys taking longer to complete than before. DOH has received budget approval and will be adding some additional surveyors statewide over the next few months. Some nursing home members have experienced a period of 22 months or longer since their last survey, and while DOH is looking to reduce this time to align with the statute calling for no more than 15 months between surveys, they acknowledge that this may take time.
DOH is reviewing regional survey performance, and while they acknowledge regional variance, they state that they believe those differences between regional citations is diminishing. The top five citations statewide were Care Plan Development, Infection Control, Unnecessary Medications, Storing/Preparing Food, and Investigations.
There was a discussion about abuse reporting related to the requirement to report allegations of abuse immediately, but not later than two hours after the allegation is made, if the events that cause the allegation to be made involve abuse or result in serious bodily injury. According to DOH, not all facilities are reporting within the required time frames, and as a result, deficiencies for the delay in reporting are being issued. The DOH Incident Reporting Manual does not clearly communicate this requirement. DOH is planning to update the manual once changes to the abuse reporting requirements that are part of the current State regulations are modified, in order to align more closely with federal requirements. However, no specific time frames for those changes were provided. In the meantime, members should review their current policies, procedures, and training programs on abuse prevention to ensure that they reflect the current requirements and time frames for reporting. In addition, DOH stressed the need for nursing homes to engage in a thorough root cause analysis when incidents occur, especially those involving resident-to-resident episodes.
Contact: Elliott Frost, efrost@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8832