There have been numerous questions regarding a webinar that was presented on March 15, 2012. PANAC would like to take this opportunity to dispel some of the misspoken claims.
- Care plans do NOT have to be written within the first 14 days of any resident’s stay at a facility.
- As stated by Janet Gerber in a recent note, “According to professional standards of practice, you need a care plan as soon as you accept the care for any patient/resident/client. However, it does not become “comprehensive” until that MDS/CAA process is complete.” That timeframe is usually not by day 14.
- It was recommended during that same webinar that you use a color-coded form that will give you all of the Quality Measure information, Medicare RUG classifiers etc. on it. These change and continue to change based on the information from the Errata from CMS. These forms cost money and cause you to rely on something instead of your assessment skills and your own intellect.
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There is no “magic bullet” color-coded form(s) that will make things easier to do than actually reading the manual and reviewing the most recent Errata Data.
- The Manual, Errata Data and the Training area is located at;
MDS version 1.08
One last topic that was stated in the CMS education on the changes last week that we would like to speak on, even if you have an electronic system that basically “tells” you what each resident triggered for do not allow it to tell you what to care plan. If you feel strongly as a team that a resident may need care planned for an issue that may not have triggered you need to ask yourself a few questions. One, why didn’t the resident trigger for that problem? Two, did we capture accurate information about the resident?
Do not allow a form or a computer program to dictate how you are going to care for the residents you serve. The original intent of the MDS was not reimbursement. It was to show staff how to care for the residents better. Use the MDS as a tool to help you care for the resident and accurately capture the information on the MDS. You will be paid what you deserve.
We ask everyone to take a deep breath – READ the manual – from the website – along with the errata and do your very best come April 1st. Remember that we got though October 1st 2010 and we will get through this as well.
