Our team actively connected with many of you while attending events including the NIC Fall Conference, AHCA Annual Conference, LeadingAge Annual Conference, PointClickCare, SummitSenior Living Innovation Forum (SLIF), and CAHF Annual Conference. Each one enlightened our understanding of your challenges and how we can shape our technologies to meet your needs. Below, find highlights of a few of these.

NIC Fall Conference

At NIC, we heard a bit about the economical and financial outlook for the upcoming months, and picked up on their positive vibes around now being a great time to invest in senior housing, as well as a good time to reposition the marketing around senior housing. But, the big takeaway was…there is a rapidly growing active senior segment and serving the needs of this population will be key to success.

AHCA Annual Conference

Mark Parkinson assured senior care operators, saying ‘government is not going to let our sector fail’ and ‘recovery is possible’ and sharing these inspirational stats:

• 30% of sector is at or above pre-pandemic census
• 1/3 of sector is not using staffing agency

His advice for recovery is simple:

• Don’t quit – keep going
• Commit to top performance (hint: it’s about leadership and culture!)
• Fight and be active

He left us with a quote from Winston Churchill, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Translation, we as an industry now control our future.

And, we left you with a new solution for ensuring you get paid every dollar, every day for the care you provide. If we didn’t connect, read more about primeVIEW’s Century Therpy Plus module, which assures clinical and therapy assessments are always in alignment.

LeadingAge Annual Conference

LeadingAge touched upon what we learned from COVID and two take-aways that resonated for us were:

• Technology may have been ‘nice to have’ pre-COVID, but it became essential during and will remain so moving forward.
• Senior care operators realized the challenges of disparate technology platforms and data, which makes vendors who easily integrate key partners in gaining efficiency

We concur and we’re here to be both your guide, and your single source for integrated data and technology. We told you about our Century Rehab therapy data integration above, but we also announced a key integration with PointClickCare – two-way EHR intergration for more accurate and expedited claims processing via primeCLAIMS.

PointClickCare Summit

PrimeVIEW’s Customer Experience Manager, Tara Vantroost captures the spirit of what this and all events brought for us this year. Her favorite part was “not only giving hugs to so many people [she] has worked with over the years and finally putting a face with a name, but also being able to see the excitement on new prospective clients’ faces when they see what the dashboard actually does!” Tara strives to make your experience with primeVIEW exceptional and enjoys feedback from all prospects so we can always provide the best services.

Jonathon Duvall, our Senior Director of Product Management, also spoke at PCC Summit with Century Rehabilitation CEO Tammy Tuminaro about how staffing can have a significant impact on how your facilities are perceived. Did you know primeVIEW allows you to calculate your current staffing stars’ trajectory, be alerted to 1-star warnings, and calculate turnover and weekend staffing during the quarter to course correct before submitting data to CMS.

Need to see the dashboard? Want to see the future of the stars?

The Best Takeaways

Leverage primeVIEW see the changes in your operational data over time and across facilities to uncover meaningful information. By offering your staff near real-time access anytime online they can better understand the how, what, where, and when so they can spend more time on the how!

Rely on primeCLAIMS to automate and simplify the tedious processes associated with ensuring you get reimbursed for the dedicated care hours you provide to your communities. The efficiency our claims app brings will reduce the staff and time needed to make sure you get paid every dollar, every day.

Together we can better serve long-term, post-acute communities!

Are Long-term, post-acute (LTPAC) operators finding PDPM as a significant pain point? Prime Care Tech and Century Rehab's new primeVIEW Century Therapy Plus can help. Recently, in a joint press release we announced the addition of a first-of-kind technology for comparing therapist assessment data to that of clinical staff.

Automating this time-consuming process of tracking and comparing this data empowers senior care operators to achieve three goals: 

• Identify differences in assessment data captured by therapists and clinical staff in a near real-time alerts-based tool.
• Proactively address those differences before a care plan and associated reimbursement is finalized.
• Reduce reliance on manual and time-consuming analysis of assessment and care data.

This is HUGE! PDPM is fully implemented across the SNF industry. The ability to identify the differences between the therapist and the clinical assessment minimizes the time needed to collect and compare data throughout a patient stay.

We discuss this in more detail during our recent webinar with Century Rehabilitation, which was also a well-attended session during the recent PointClickCare Summit. Be sure to sign up for this replay to hear more.

Combining primeVIEW's dashboard analytics with Century Rehabilitation’s therapy care data offers our clients a complete view of their patients' care plan. This takes the guesswork out of calculating PDPM, enabling staff to convert two-hour meetings with therapy providers into quick 15-minute conversations over easy-to-compare assessments. 

Together we can better serve long-term post-acute operators! Learn more about the integration and dashboard for primeVIEW by downloading our primeVIEW Century Therapy Plus e-sheet. Or better, get in touch for a demo.

Recently, CEO Jim Hoey and Sales VP Jae Sparks attended Reimbursement-Con by Zimmet Healthcare. CMS' Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM) was a hot topic, with speakers offering strategies for skilled nursing facilities (SNF) to maximize reimbursement.

To fully appreciate these strategies, let's back up to what we know, what we expect, and some wildcards with PDPM. 

What We Know

• PDPM was the biggest overhaul in SNF payments in a generation.
• PDPM was supposed to be budget neutral.
• Before the March 2020 public health emergency, experts said PDPM was more generous than CMS intended. 

What We Expect

• CMS wants $1.7 billion back, which could mean a 5% recalibration.
• Using average daily rates in a post-pandemic world could cause a larger recalibration next year, more like 10-12%.

The Wildcards

• CMS did not compensate SNFs for COVID care until April 1, 2020.
• CMS assumed all SNFs were affected by COVID in the same way.
• ACOs and value-based purchasing are forcing shorter lengths of stay with sicker patients.
• Due to transitional care units, hospitals are seeing most of the PDPM benefits.

While legislators seek reform, SNFs must still try to survive in the PDPM world. To this point, speakers discussed the best practices. An overriding theme here was using Interim Payment Assessments (IPAs). Only 3% of SNFs are, and it's to your disadvantage.

IPAs

• CMS wants IPAs to help SNFs track the status of a patient’s conditions and needs for a higher level of care.
• The purpose of IPAs is to establish a payment rate or billing code for billing Medicare Part A.
• Implement IPAs when a resident condition changes and may last 14 days or more.
• Conduct IPAs as a routine when resident stays hits day 21; a lot can change in three weeks.

Other Suggestions

• Offer specialty care and therapy, like speech and language.
• Stress the importance of documenting all work, using multiple documenters, where possible.
• Correct coding, correct coding, correct coding; billers may need refresher courses.
• Applaud payers when they do the right things, but never take that as enough.

Technology can help.

• Our primeVIEW and Managed Care MASTER solutions allow you to customize alerts on certain clinical conditions or changes that should trigger staff to conduct an IPA. 
• Our primeCLAIMS solution makes coding and editing simple and its backed by a support team experienced in post-acute billing.
  
  

In a May 5 article, 'CMS let the cat out of the bag, but it’s managed care that’s ready to pounce,' McKnight's Long-Care News recapped critical points from our recent Managed Care Webinar: Goodbye PDPM, Hello Levels! with Mix Solutions.

• Webinar poll: 42% of attendees said they’d already had to convert at least some contracts from PDPM to levels.
• Susie Mix: "They (the plans) are very aggressive in not only cutting our rates 30% to 40%, but they’re also very aggressive in starting this right now."

If you missed advice offered during our webinar, there's still time to tune in.

The one constant in senior care is change, right? A lot is changing right now. If the headlines flew past you, we've got your back. This infographic will bring you up to speed.

You should also know we have tools to help you flexibly adjust to change. Get in touch with us to hear more.