Nursing Home Staffing Compliance Responses Due This Week
(Sept. 3, 2024) Nursing homes seeking to submit redetermination or penalty reduction requests based on State determinations of compliance with staffing requirements for the first quarter of 2023 should do so without delay. Providers have 10 business days from the date of the letter to submit their request. Using the methodology the Department of Health (DOH) describes on page 8 of the posted slides (available here), the deadline to file requests for homes whose compliance letters are dated Aug. 21st would be Sept. 5th.
If a facility was deemed non-compliant with any of the three State staffing requirements (1.1 hours per resident day of Registered Nurse (RN)/Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) staff time, 2.2 hours of Certified Nurse Aide (CNA), and 3.5 hours overall) on a quarterly average basis, their non-compliance letter shows the quarterly average staffing levels that DOH calculated for the home and lists the dates of non-compliance. The Staffing Requirements Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document, available here, includes a table on page 6 that outlines daily penalties before any reductions are applied.
As described in greater detail here, providers who are deemed non-compliant should first verify whether they agree with the Department’s calculations. If a facility identifies any errors that may have been made in that quarter’s submission of Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) data or disagrees with the DOH calculations, they should submit a redetermination request using the link provided in the non-compliance letter.
Facilities that are deemed non-compliant may request a penalty reduction by completing the online penalty reduction application, which is comprised of three schedules:
- Schedule A is for extraordinary circumstances such as natural disaster or declared state emergency. The Statewide Disaster Emergency Due to Healthcare Staffing Shortages declared by the Governor (Executive Orders 4.0-4.22) lasted from September 2021 until June 2023, meaning that it was in effect for the entire quarter.
- Schedule B focuses on reasonable attempts to comply in the face of the Commissioner’s Declaration of Acute Labor Shortages. This schedule requires a narrative outlining the steps that the facility took to ensure the health and safety of the resident population during the period of non-compliance and allows the provider to report on the efforts made to try to meet the requirements. DOH requests documentation for each intervention reported. The Commissioner’s Declaration of an Acute Labor Shortage (available here) covers the full quarter and includes RNs, LPNs, and Aides in all parts of the state.
- Schedule C is to be used if the facility was engaged in a verifiable labor dispute during the quarter.
Links to a recording and slides from a November 2023 webinar in which DOH walked through the penalty reduction request process is available on the DOH Minimum Staffing webpage.
If you have questions or encounter any difficulties in submitting the applications, please reach out to LeadingAge NY or contact DOH at NHSafeStaffing@health.ny.gov.
Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841