PBJ Data Due Next Week
We remind nursing home members that Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) staffing data submissions for the quarter covering Jan. 1st through March 31, 2019 must be finalized with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) by May 15th. PBJ submissions are used to calculate quarterly staffing ratings used in the Five-Star Quality Rating System. Only data that are successfully submitted by the deadline are used in determining ratings, and inaccurate submissions can result in a home being assigned a single star for the staffing domain.
CMS strongly recommends that providers upload their data in advance of the deadline to avoid potential system slowdowns. Providers may overwrite previously submitted data for that quarter until the deadline date.
When finalizing data for submission, members should take special care to avoid common errors CMS has highlighted by:
- ensuring that meal break time is excluded for each employee when hours are reported (even when a meal break is not taken);
- ensuring that providers are meeting, and accurately reflecting in their reporting, the requirement to have an RN on site for at least eight consecutive hours, seven days per week; and
- ensuring that Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessments, specifically discharge assessments, are submitted in a timely manner to ensure that the home’s daily census, which CMS uses to compute staffing, is accurate.
CMS refers homes that fail to meet the RN staffing requirement as well as homes that have low weekend staffing to the State’s survey agency for further scrutiny. The latest version of the PBJ manual and related resources are posted here.
Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841