QIES Blackout Period to Disrupt Providers
By Marilyn Mines, Senior Advisor, Advisory Services
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that the Quality Improvement and Evaluation Systems (QIES), which is used to submit required assessment information to the national repository and to obtain Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reporting (CASPER) reports, will be out of service from March 16, 2016 at 8:00 pm EST through 11:59 pm EST on March 21, 2016, for an extended maintenance period. This will affect all QIES connectivity and systems.
The Minimum Data Set assessments (MDS) for skilled nursing facilities, the Patient Assessment Instrument (PAI) assessments for inpatient rehabilitation facilities and the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) for home health agencies, the Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation Data Set (CARE) for long-term care hospitals, and the Hospice Item Set (HIS) for hospice agencies must be submitted in a timely fashion. Therefore, preparing for this outage in order to prevent noncompliance is essential.
Here are a couple of hints:
- Complete as many assessments as possible and submit on March 14 or 15, 2016. Anticipate that you will not be the only organization doing this. So plan early and expect delays.
- Plan your download of CASPER reports accordingly.
- During the time of the “blackout,” work on the assessments that were started the week before March 16, 2016 and have them ready for submission immediately on March 22, 2016.
- Keep your calendar going: don’t let this break in service fool you into thinking you don’t have to do any assessments! Business as usual will keep you in compliance!
If you have any further questions about this time period, please contact your Marcum advisor. Information contained herein is accurate at the time of publication. We recommend that you consult with your Marcum advisor before implementing any action.
