Dive Brief:
- CMS is proposing hundreds of pages of new rules for nursing homes that paticipate in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
- The new rules run the gamut from meal times, to use of psychotic drugs and staffing issues.
- Some of the proposed changes stem from the Affordable Care Act and other federal laws; others are designed to simplify regulations and minimize costs.
Dive Insight:
"The existing regulations don't even conceive of electronic communications the way they exist today," said Dr. Shari Ling, Medicare's deputy chief medical officer. "Also there have been significant advances in the science and delivery of healthcare that just weren't imagined at the time the rules were originally written. For example, the risks of anti-psychotic medications and overuse of antibiotics are now clearly known, when previously they were thought to be harmless."
Some of the issues covered under the proposed new rules include electronic health records, patient participation in care, infection control, antibiotic and antipsychotic medications, reducing hospital admissions, roommate choice and dementia training for nurses.