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Collective Medical Helps Skilled Nursing Facilities Avoid CMS Penalties
[September 01, 2020]

Collective Medical Helps Skilled Nursing Facilities Avoid CMS Penalties


Collective Medical, delivering the leading real-time ADT-based care collaboration network and provider activation, today announced a solution to support skilled nursing facilities in rapidly generating reports to comply with new CMS COVID-19 reporting requirements and avoid civil monetary penalties (CMPs).

In late May, CMS released new federal guidelines requiring state participation in a targeted infection-control survey. Facilities found with violations-such as failing to report patients who have tested positive for COVID-19-will face some degree of CMP. Depending on past history of compliance, some facilities might incur penalties of up to $20,000 per instance that goes unreported. Since the implementation of the new requirements, CMS has issued $15 million in CMPs to approximately 3,400 nursing homes.

Collective helps SNFs avoid these CMPs by generating COVID reports on patients within a given facility, so care teams can accurately report positive cases to CMS. By significantly reducing the administrative burden from compiling reports, care teams have more time to focus on carng for COVID patients and preventing the disease from spreading to others in their facility. Additionally, SNFs using Collective are connected to other care teams across the care continuum, to receive real-time, actionable clinical insights to drive informed decision making and ensure care teams know which of their patients need treatment or isolation.



The long-term care industry continues to navigate the ever-changing landscape of care delivery while responding to a "new normal" in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. "Healthcare collaboration among a patient's entire care team becomes even more critical when dealing with infectious disease," says Manolo Garcia, SVP of Information Technology at Consulate Health Care.

He adds, "Collective Medical allows us to access real-time clinical information across a variety of provider organizations and identify patients that have been diagnosed with or considered at risk for COVID-19 as they transition between care settings. With this data, we are able to better protect all patients, our care center staff and our vendors that provide essential support to our care center operations. Collective Medical is one of several technologies being implemented at Consulate Health Care that allows us to spend less time tracking down accurate data across the continuum of care, and more time focusing on our mission to provide excellent service with our hearts and hands."


Collective connects patient data across all 50 states and has a long history of supporting post-acute providers in achieving seamless transitions of care and transformative reductions in preventable readmissions. According to an article published by Skilled Nursing News, within five months of implementing the Collective platform, Marquis Companies-a SNF provider based in the Pacific Northwest-reduced its hospital readmissions rate by approximately 60 percent.

"With extremely vulnerable patients and little visibility into patient history, SNFs have a difficult challenge ahead of them in effectively managing patients while sending timely reports to CMS," says Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical. "There isn't a one size fits all solution to solving this complicated issue, but our hope is that by offering our support to SNFs through rapid reporting and care collaboration capabilities, they'll be better able to render the safest and best quality care for their patients."

ABOUT COLLECTIVE MEDICAL

Collective Medical is the nation's leading ADT-based real-time care notification, activation, and collaboration platform. Proven to streamline care transitions, improve coordination, and reduce unnecessary length of stay and admissions, Collective helps improve patient outcomes and lower costs by closing communication gaps across care settings that undermine care. With a nationwide network of thousands of hospitals and health systems, primary, specialty, and post-acute clinics, health plans and ACOs, Collective integrates alongside EHRs and health information exchanges to empower decision making by highlighting essential insights and actions to take on patients a provider has already seen, is currently seeing, or should see. Collective is based in Salt Lake City. Learn more at www.collectivemedical.com.


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