A new report says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid need to improve its data to assess the quality of nursing homes.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ( CMS) had conflicting analyses on monitoring nursing homes. The CMS uses four data sets that have provided inconsistent results in nursing home assessments.
More from McKnight’s:
The GAO cited recent trends in four data sets that show conflicting findings on nursing home quality. One data set, consumer complaints, indicates that consumers’ concerns over quality have increased in recent years. Three other sets — staffing levels, deficiencies and clinical quality measures — signal a potential improvement in overall quality.
Those discrepancies “make it difficult to determine whether observed trends reflect actual changes in quality, data issues, or both,” the report said.
The report’s authors stressed the importance of quality data to the implementation of the value based purchasing program, set to start in fiscal year 2019.
The GAO advised CMS to create a “clear plan” for auditing self-reported data, and to implement a process for assessing the effects of oversight modifications. A consistent modification monitoring process is also needed to address oversight changes made by state agencies that could have potentially harmful effects on CMS’ ability to oversee nursing home quality, the GAO said.
The study also noted that the CMS would consider a focused survey to better analyze nursing home data.
Photo by theilr via Flickr CC License
