With CMS intensifying its oversight on hospice and home health organizations, adapting to a...
With CMS intensifying its oversight on hospice and home health organizations, adapting to a proactive compliance posture is essential. There are no more prior notification of surveys, no more block out days, CMS will take over validation surveys by sending in a CMS contracted agent with the Accrediting Organization simultaneously to co-conduct the survey, and state complaint surveys may turn into full validation surveys. The only way to be ready for surprise surveys is to stay survey ready at all times. This blog series lays out the Five Most Important Steps to achieve Perpetual Survey Readiness.
Step 2: Document, Document, Document!
Proper documentation is crucial to the success of any home health or hospice organization. To ensure that you are always ready for a survey, it is important to enhance the thoroughness and accuracy of your documentation and assessments, both for clinical and (HR) human resource records. This will serve as the foundation for all your patient-related activities and how they are measured.
Additionally, it's important to organize and maintain all the necessary documentation and records required for the survey, making them easily accessible for surveyors. This will help ensure that the survey gets off to a strong start.
Here’s what you should do now.
To get started, audit your current documentation processes and policies. Ask yourself and your team the following questions:
- Is your documentation consistently complete and accurate?
- How do you know if a document needs to be updated?
- Do you have a process for identifying and correcting inaccurate documentation?
Based on your answers, you should initiate performance improvement projects to close any documentation gaps, train and educate your staff on the importance of documentation, and continuously monitor your performance, making appropriate adjustments until you achieve your goals.
QAPI is the glue that holds compliance together when you leverage robust audit tools.
Having robust audit tools can make a big difference in the compliance and survey readiness of your organization. Auditing allows your organization to identify risks and mitigate them.
Clinical and HR (human resource) audits should be done monthly, and the data should be aggregated and presented to the QAPI committee quarterly. The committee will review the results and provide data-driven decisions and performance improvement measures to correct any areas of noncompliance.
You should review your documentation performance improvement projects at each QAPI meeting until your organization's established goals are met and compliance is reached.
Capture and act on your audit results in real time.
With a robust set of audit tools, QAPIplus automatically calculates your compliance rates in real time, allowing you to identify problem areas and adjust processes and procedures quickly to ensure you achieve your goals.
To learn more about how QAPIplus can streamline your audit and reporting processes, request a demo today.
Read more blog posts about survey readiness, quality, and compliance management.
