Stay up to date on the latest affordable senior housing news, policy updates, and resources. Click the link below to view this week's recap. Affordable housing Weekly Recap . Here is your weekly Affordable Housing Weekly Recap
FY2027 Hospice Wage Index Final Rule Heads to OMB.
CPR for ALL Direct Care Staff
Stay up to date on the latest Workforce news and updates. Click the link below to view the full recap. Here is your weekly Workforce Weekly Recap
COVID “Up to Date” Definition Will Not Change
CPR for ALL Direct Care Staff
Updates to Quality Measure Thresholds Are Back The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has updated the Five Star Quality Rating System Technical Users’ Guide to reflect changes to ratings thresholds for the Quality Measures domain, expected with the quarterly refresh scheduled for July 29. These changes are based on a policy change dating back to March 2019 when CMS announced that they would begin doing regular updates every six months. The policy states that Quality Measure domain rating thresholds will be updated every six months at a rate of half the previous cycle’s rate of improvement. Ratings thresholds for individual quality measures within the domain are not impacted by this policy. Prior to the implementation of this policy, threshold updates were made without regularity, often resulting in more significant changes than CMS anticipated more regular updates would provide. Additionally, CMS noted that regular updates would incentivize continuous quality improvement. The policy has not been implemented often over the seven years since it was announced, though it remained in effect. The policy was suspended for a period of time during the COVID-19 public health emergency, then later performance did not allow for the types of threshold updates described in the policy. An update was implemented in January 2025 and ratings have steadily improved since that time, resulting in the conditions to once again apply this policy with the July 2026 refresh. Assuming performance continues in this trend, nursing homes can expect another adjustment to Quality Measure domain rating thresholds in January 2027. The LeadingAge Report Portal will be updated following the release of the July quarterly refresh data and will reflect the domain rating threshold changes.
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CMS Permitting More Services to be Offered Outpatient CMS has proposed its Calendar Year 2027 Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule to continue to phase out procedures and services from the Inpatient Only List. These are services/procedures that previously could only be provided on an inpatient hospital basis. These changes have potential impacts on Skilled Nursing Facility and Home Health agency admissions. For more details, check out the full article here which includes a link to the list of 638 procedures to be removed in 2027.
