Today, we have a special guest post from Shon over at www.eldercarelifesolutions.com: Did you know? Nursing Home 5-Star Rating Not Consistent   Much has been discussed about the new Medicare 5-Star Rating system in the recent months.  Although this is a great system to quickly look at how a facility ranks, it is filled with problems. Many people have posted comments about one nursing home having a 5-star rating being deplorable, while...

Is your physician putting you out of compliance by not visiting their patients timely?  It’s pretty common for nursing homes to have to remind their docs several times that it’s time to see their nursing home patients.  Many physicians get so busy with their own practices, they simply put the nursing home on the back burner. This is something you must keep on top of.  Usually, this task is assigned to the Medical Records...

Here is a list I put together of our federal regulations or F-tags.  There are a couple of nice lists online already, but they haven’t been recently updated. These are current as of January 15, 2010. Click below for a .pdf: F-Tag List for Nursing Homes Good luck! Share this:FacebookShareStumbleUponDiggEmailRedditPrint

There is a trend I’m noticing in surveys recently when the surveyors are conducting staff interviews.  It seems some survey teams are having facility staff members write and sign statements outlining what they’ve done wrong as discovered in the surveyor’s interview of them.  The statements are then used as evidence to support the tag you are about to be cited for a deficient practice.  Why are administrators allowing...

Here is a picture of a nursing home administrator’s best friend.  No, not my dog!  It’s the watermelon book sitting behind him. (Although, my Boston Terrier, Maverick,  ranks right up there, too!) The Long Term Care Survey book, F-tag book, or any other name you might call it is commonly referred to as the “Watermelon Book” in our circles.  It’s called the watermelon book because of the color...

Believe it or not, 90%+ of the staff members working in a nursing home have no idea of how the facility is assigned deficiencies (usually called tags or F-tags) or what the letter grade it receives actually means.  I am going to give you a quick and easy look at how deficiencies are cited per the scope & severity grid I included below. SCOPE As you can see, we have a box with several columns and rows of letters.  The columns...