Update: Pay-For-Performance Coming to Nursing Homes

Nursing homes in AZ, MS, NY and WI had until May 1, 2009 to apply for participation in the Nursing Home Value-Based Purchasing demonstration project. Award letters are expected to be sent out around June 1st 2009 to 50 selected nursing homes in each state. Each nursing home then has 30 days from the date on their acceptance letter to accept. The project will begin in the summer and last for three years.

Even if your nursing home is not participating in CMS's demonstration project, you can still benefit by learning more about it. If the program is successful, it will be expanded to more states and participation will likely eventually become mandatory. Understand the quality measures used in the project and identify areas of improvement for your facility now so you'll be ready. This will give you the advantage of extra time that your competitors might not have had.

For more information about the demonstration or the quality measures used, visit http://www.nhvbp.com or contact Enovasis Healthcare Solutions.

Pay-For-Performance Coming To Nursing Homes

CMS is kicking off a five state pay-for-performance (P4P) demonstration project that will help them design incentives for quality improvement in nursing homes. They're calling it Nursing Home Value-Based Purchasing.

Arizona, Mississippi, New York and Wisconsin have been chosen to be the host states. Nursing homes in these states are invited to participate.

Basically how the demonstration project will work is over the next couple years CMS will collect quality data on participating nursing homes, assign scores based on performance and compare those scores to other nursing homes in the state overall and over time.

CMS will determine how much money is saved as a result of nursing homes' improvements and then allocate those cost savings to the best-performers in the form of incentive payments.

However if it is determined that nursing homes in a particular state did not improve overall, no incentive payments will be disbursed...no matter how well a particular nursing home performed.

If you're considering participating in the demonstration and would like assistance, Enovasis can guide you through it. Enovasis can also identify and implement improvements to increase the likelihood of receiving incentive payments. Contact us today.

For more information about the demonstration or to apply for participation visit www.nhvbp.com.