Yesterday's Long Term Care Council - sponsored by Therapeutic Resources - had a standing room only crowd to hear Mojdeh Rutigliano, MSN, RN, RAC-CT, Director of Clinical Documentation and Reimbursement at The Hebrew Home at Riverdale, speak about the CMS changes proposed relating to the MDS 3.0 and RUGS IV. While the MDS 3.0 has not been finalized yet, there was plenty of new information to digest, which will have a major impact on the management of long term care rehabilitation programming.
Some of the changes anticipated include the sharing of concurrent minutes between patients, the limit to no more than three concurrent sessions at one time, the new methodologies for computing capturable minutes on the MDS, Medicare Short Stay Assessments and their implications and the change to OMRA's . While implementation of RUGS IV has been postponed until 2011, CMS is considering the wisdom of this, and may be implementing it concurrent with the new MDS 3.0 on October 1, 2010. The bottom line is that facilities will be forced to engage additional rehab staff if they want to capture higher rehab categories under RUGS III and RUGS IV since concurrent treatment will lose most of their economic advantage.
Whatever happens, MAJOR changes are coming - and we all need to prepare. These changes will require an intensive retooling of our rehab management strategies in order to ensure fiscal viability for our facilities.
Consider attending the TR course Thriving And Surviving Under 2010/2011 Changes in Long Term Care: A Guide For Rehab Managers on Thursday, July 15, 5-8pm with Katy O'Connor, PT, Director of Corporate Therapy, Centers of Specialty Care. This is a not to be missed event, considering we only have a few months left to prepare for the October 1st changes!
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