BUFFALO HEALTHY LIVING
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) Corporation today announced that the Department of Health & Human Services (DOH) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has ranked ECMC’s Terrace View Long-Term Care Facility #1 in its SNF Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program out of 15,421 skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) nationwide.
The SNF VBP Program focuses on better outcomes and rewards skilled nursing facilities with incentive payments for the quality of care they provide to people with Medicare, in particular reducing hospital readmissions and improving quality indicators scores. The SNF VBP Program moves CMS toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity, of care they deliver to patients.*
The Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) of 2014 started the SNF VBP Program and requires CMS, among other things, to: furnish value-based incentive payments to SNFs for services; develop a methodology for assessing performance scores; adopt performance standards on a quality measure that includes achievement and improvement; and rank SNFs based on their performance from low to high.**
The highest ranked facilities will receive the highest payments, and the lowest ranked 40 percent of facilities will receive payments that are less than what they otherwise would have received without the Program. Funding for the program came from CMS, by withholding 2% of SNF Medicare payments starting October 1st, 2018. Because of its #1 ranking, Terrace View will receive a 1.64% increase in its Medicare Rates. The system measured Terrace View on its individual performance, as well as in comparison to all other SNF facilities in the nation. The program based the performance score by measuring improvements from 2015 to 2017.
Thomas J. Quatroche Jr., PhD, President and CEO, ECMC Corporation, said, “Terrace View has always provided high quality care to some of the most vulnerable in our community. It is a special place with special people who truly care for its residents. This ranking affirms this quality of care, and also rewards Terrace View financially to provide more resources for the great work they do every day.”
Anthony DePinto, D.C., L.N.H.A Administrator for Terrace View said, “Over the past three years, the staff at Terrace View has worked very hard to improve our CMS star ranking and all other aspects of care. The VBP program criteria paralleled that improvement. We were expecting good scores; however, to be ranked #1 is truly sensational.”
The table below includes the SNF VBP results with the ranking and the Terrace View ranking and number of participating SNFs highlighted.
TERRACE VIEW LONG TERM CARE FACILITY |
|
| Annual Performance Score Report | |
| Performance Information | |
| Baseline Period (CY 2015) RSRR | 0.16400 |
| Improvement Threshold (Baseline Period Inverted RSRR) | 0.83600 |
| Performance Period (CY 2017) RSRR | 0.15788 |
| Performance Period Inverted RSRR | 0.84212 |
| FY 2019 Achievement Threshold | 0.79590 |
| FY 2019 Benchmark | 0.83601 |
| SNF VBP Achievement Score | 100.00000 |
| SNF VBP Improvement Score | 90.00000 |
| SNF VBP Performance Score | 100.00000 |
| SNF VBP Program Rank | 1 |
| Incentive Payment Multiplier | 1.0164677296 |
| NOTE: There were 5,249 unique (non-tied) performance scores in the FY 2019 SNF VBP Program and 15,421 SNFs eligible for the Program nationally. RSRR = Risk-Standardized Readmission Rate; CY = Calendar Year; FY = Fiscal Year; N/A = Not Applicable | |
Originally posted by Buffalo Healthy Living Magazine . Republished with permission.
