Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
Since the COVID pandemic, regulatory officials have escalated the review, via various audits, of SNF emergency preparedness. COVID highlighted the sporadic and often, non-existent preparations for disasters (natural and other) and disease outbreaks (pandemic or other) that existed with the SNF industry. In reality, the issues have been present for years but only regionally, highlighted … Read more
Somewhat buried within the Home Health Final Rule (PPS) was an update on a CMS initiative to identify hospice agencies requiring additional regulatory oversight for poor care performance (poor quality, unsafe care practices). Back in 2021, CMS began the Special Focus initiative and in the 2024 Hospice Final Rule, CMS indicated that the recommendations for … Read more
Since my first years in senior housing and health care, and my work way back when with Alwyn Powell (AV Powell, AV Powell and Associates), I have been fascinated by the aging journey in care settings – lengths of stay, health care utilization, quality of life and quantity of life. I’ve supported numerous research studies … Read more
Happy Hump Day! Another Wednesday with news too heavy to ignore. I’ll try to return to some levity and light in future Wednesday features. For a number of years, CMS has been playing with developing a staffing level mandate. The first CMS study from 20 years ago recommended a 4.1 hours per day benchmark. Recently, … Read more