“In April, I was proud to announce the five-part approach the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is using to guide our work as we ensure safety and quality in America’s nursing homes. We at CMS bear the responsibility to develop and enforce quality and safety standards across the nation’s health care system, and we are deeply committed to that job. Every nursing home resident deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and all of our nursing home work at CMS is predicated upon that single goal.”
“Our five-part approach announcement only scratches the surface of our efforts, and there’s a lot more to share. So, in an effort to be transparent with Americans about what CMS is doing to ensure safety and quality in America’s nursing homes, I will publish a blog on each part of our five-part approach, digging into what CMS is doing – and what we hope to do – in this critically important area. As a reminder, our approach is:
- Strengthen Oversight
- Enhance Enforcement
- Increase Transparency
- Improve Quality
- Put Patients over Paperwork
I’m excited to share the details of our work to ensure safety and quality in nursing homes. I hope you’ll come away from this series with a more thorough understanding of CMS’s work in this area.”
“Part 1: Strengthening Oversight
Strengthening oversight is the first component of our five-part approach to nursing home safety. It’s also one of the most important, since it involves our longstanding partnerships with State Survey Agencies (SSAs), whose 5,000 surveyors visit each Medicare and Medicaid participating nursing home in the country at least once a year to evaluate their adherence to basic health and safety standards as well as state licensure requirements…” Read the full article here.
Source: Ensuring Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes: Five Part Strategy Deep Dive – August 28, 2019. CMS.
