If you’re a licensed long term care facility looking to do something amazing in these difficult times, you need to know about CMP reinvestments!
You probably already know that the Civil Money Penalty is a monetary penalty CMS may impose against nursing homes for each instance a nursing home is not in substantial compliance with one or more Medicare and Medicaid participation requirements for long-term care facilities. But what you may NOT know is that a generally large portion of CMPs collected from nursing homes are returned to the states in which CMPs are imposed to be used in nursing homes! This money in many states is just sitting in a bank account waiting to be requested and used.
CMP Funds Must Be Reinvested!
In fact, state CMP funds MUST be reinvested to support activities that benefit nursing home residents and that protect or improve their quality of care or quality of life.CMP monies are being used to reinvest into state Nursing Homes and the hope is to strengthen safety and health outcomes for nursing home residents. This could be the training of staff in infection procedures or any quality care aspect of the facility.
More Than Training
This money doesn’t need to just go to training and procedures though, it can also go to services and can go for as long as 3 years. Applications recently have been granted for facilities to get iPads or other tablets so residents could Facetime with family members during the pandemic. This is a great way to apply and use the monies which will help bring families closer during this crisis. Your residents’ family members can go beyond just holding up signs outside of windows and waving.
Writing For a Better Future
Another great example of the use of these funds was a project in Wisconsin in which high school students joined up with residents at the Park View Health Center in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for an innovative program, “Write Your Life”.
Over four days there was facilitated engagement between nursing home residents and students through a workshop designed to engage participants with music, poetry, and art. Residents shared their memories with the students using mementos provided by the nursing home residents’ families. After their days together, the group reunited months later for a “book party,” where seniors were presented with a printed book of the memories they shared. The two project goals, were to “provide a memorable impact in relationship building between young adults and our elderly and/or disabled residents, and to give our resident participants a means to share and preserve valued histories for their loved ones.” Take a look at the writeup on this story here.
CMS Toolkits & Breakthrough Communities
CMS has developed “toolkits” to help with quality care and this program which are outlined and available on their website. The Toolkits were designed as a result of CMS working with nursing home Breakthrough Communities which is a learning collaborative design where a group of nursing homes joined learning sessions and team calls to learn about quality improvement concepts.
A key Toolkit that was developed was the Head to Toe Infection prevention kit which is something that is of grave importance during the Covid-19 crisis. There are a half dozen toolkits that focus on Dementia, staff training, and competency, and employee satisfaction all geared toward quality care.
Flexibility Built In
The use of these funds is flexible as long as its benefiting the quality of care for your residents the application for most states is short just a page or two and the amount of money is variable but it is substantial. There is a spreadsheet on the website showing a summary of the projects that were completed
Civil Money Penalty Reinvestments FAQ:
- Are non-certified LTC facilities eligible for these funds? No. Only SNF not Assisted Living or any other senior care.
- Does a project need to benefit multiple LTC facilities to be approved? No. A group of facilities can request money or an individual facility can apply for funds
- When can CMP monies be requested? Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Video Transcript
Jason Long
Hey, everyone, this is Jason Long with Cantata Health, Net Solutions division. I am here today with Kevin McCormick, who has been in this industry now for 30 years. Is that right, Kevin? Just about 30 years, 30 years, and you’ve worked as an accountant, a controller, you’ve worked in support as a product manager in development and training implementation and really across this entire, the entire spectrum of software in this in this industry. Is that correct?
Kevin McCormack
That’s correct. I was an administrator in training before I left and join our software company that we ended up bringing into that, those facilities at the time.
Jason Long
All right. So today, we’re going to be talking about the CMP that is the civil money penalty, and the reinvestments for that. So tell me what What is what is the problem with this? What What is the CMP? And what does it address? And yeah, tell me what’s the CMP? What does it address what’s, how does it solve things?
Kevin McCormack
So there’s a good question, what’s the civil monetary penalty? Is CMS imposes fines against nursing homes, nursing facilities, skilled nursing, and for each incident there, they’re not in compliance, whether you know, from a, you know, for example, you know, you come in and you’re doing a survey, the survey process comes back with, you know, substantial issues and they don’t get fixed, they get fined. And those fines CMS collects and what they did instead of going back and dumping it into the budget, what what they’ve done is giving it give it back to the states to reinvest in the local facilities in that particular state. And the money is, is substantial.
Sometimes it can be a fine of $100,000. $10,000, $20,000, $200,000 or more depending on what what the issue was. So what what they’ve done is said the state would the first thing I think we should go back is that those funds are typically used when any facilities decertified and the residents have moved, you know, get transferred back to home back to another facility or another skilled nursing facility, they use those funds to do that. So any facility that’s closed down those funds are used primarily for that, but there’s certainly leftover funds and those funds they want reinvest reinvest it into the facilities in the state to support the activities and to benefit the nursing home residents. And the key point of this is to improve the quality of care and the quality of life for the residents in that facility. Okay, and that could be training of stash staff, it could be infection procedures or any quality care aspect of the facility. And the goal in the end is to increase the quality of care using the funds from the penalised nursing facilities to give the appropriate care to the residents. That’s basically what it boils down to.
Jason Long
So I’m interested, do you have any idea what percentage of the money actually goes back to the facilities?
Kevin McCormack
I haven’t looked at the think most of it does. I think most of it does go back to the state. I don’t think that CMS keeps all of it at all. I think what they do is just to keep the program running, know what the cost of maintaining the program and maintaining the staff to do this is primarily I believe, what that money is. That portion of the money is used for
Jason Long
Okay, so, so the states have a pile of his money sitting around. And and then how do you if I’m a facility administrator or owner, manager, whatever? How do I, how do I get access to that money?
Kevin McCormack
Well, that’s a good question. How did the facilities participate in this? You know, there’s an application process. And for these funds in each state sort of determined based on, you know, what, where state where you are located, that you fill out an application to get these funds. And so each state if you go on to the website, which is if you just search Google CMS, civil money, penalty reinvestment, they’ll get right to the page, very simple search. And there you’ll find state specific application instructions. So each state has specific instructions. And one of the nice things about this is you go ahead and put an application In the turnaround time is not going to be six months a year. This is 3060 day type type of turnaround. So they, they, they move pretty quickly and they want to give the the funds back to help the residents in that particular state.
Jason Long
That’s great. That’s really good to know. I had no idea that government worked that fast ever.
Kevin McCormack
Typically not. But in this particular case, they do work rather quickly.
Jason Long
Perfect. All right. So what what can the money be used for?
Kevin McCormack
Yeah, so that’s a good question.
The money can be can use for a number of things and mostly its support in helping quality improvement. And on their website. There’s a number of toolkits out there. So you can go in, you know, you don’t have to spend any money but they’re free toolkits out there to help with infection control, for example, or dementia training or staff training or You know, interaction with the community. So this is the type, you know, anything that’s going to help the nursing facility give a better life to the residents while they’re in the facility. So basically, it’s going to be, it’s there to support the residents. And so it’s all about improvement initiatives.
Jason Long
Okay, all of that.
Where would we find the information on that?
Kevin McCormack
Search CMS and that’s over there, it gives you a list of qualified ones. There’s a whole list out there so you can see the all the qualified items that have been okayed by each and every state, and sometimes it’s a multi it’s not just one facility, it’s multiple facilities get together, and maybe it’s a third party, such as, you know, a company that does trainings for example, they might get together 20 facilities and pull them all together to do the training jointly, are it could be an individual facility wants to get an iPad to and this is something that you know recently came up and they’ve been using the money for it is that you get $3,000 and you get a few iPads. And during the pandemic, where there’s no person to person contact with a family member cannot go into the nursing facility, and you see a TV, you know, the family members outside with the side by the car, you love your papa. But what it allows for is the nursing facility to spend the money especially at this point in time, they don’t have the money to spend, they can spend it on an iPad, for example, and be able to any resident can FaceTime with family members and get that closeness which they don’t have it currently. So I mean, that’s a great use it at the funds.
Jason Long
Okay, kind of curious, you know, at night solutions. We’ve got our new family portal coming out. And the idea if, if that money can be used for family portal.
Kevin McCormack
I’d have to look into that one. I’m not 100% sure, we’ll have to look.
Jason Long
Yeah, we should, we should definitely take a look at that one.
Kevin McCormack
Another example of how the funds were used was a Wisconsin nursing home Parkview in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They, you know, an innovative program they they started called right your life. So over four days, high school and college students went in, and it was facilitating engagement between the residents and the students through a workshop to engage the residents and and the students in music, poetry and art. And what they did was share the memories with the students using mementos that were provided by the residents family. And after all the days together they had they reunited A few months later for a book party, where the residents we’re presented with a printed book of the memories they had shared with the kids. And, you know, the goals of this was, you know, to provide a, you know, an impact to the relationship building between young young adults and the elderly. And it turned out to be a very impactful piece.
So it’s not always, you know, just quality improvement, it’s the improvement of the life of the resident.
Jason Long
That’s, that is a really, really does a great thing to do that, that it’s, it’s interesting, you bring that up, because I’ve kind of thought in the past about doing more to bring together long term care facilities with specifically with students to connect those generations. So I think that that’s, that’s a that’s a really interesting one. Is there information online about that
Kevin McCormack
Actually so you can go on, you can go on that same website and be able to find that rather easily.
Jason Long
Okay, I’ll also make sure that there’s a link in our article about that one, for sure. And of course, links for everything else as well. So if I’m a nursing long term, if I’m a skilled nursing facility, how do I participate? How do I how do i is it just like fill out the form? And then I get going, and then I’m all set? Is there? Is there anything else I need to know about?
Kevin McCormack
Now that’s about it? Well, yeah, you have to have a project in mind. Okay, and, you know, look to see if that project is have been has been funded in the past. And if it has, go ahead and fill out the application, go through, and what you’re trying to do, especially during the pandemic, is you’re trying to decrease the loneliness and increase the, you know, the quality of life in your facility.
Jason Long
Okay, so what if I’m not a certified long term care facility.
Kevin McCormack
Unfortunately, it’s only for skilled nursing facilities, licensed skilled Nursing Facility in Medicare and Medicaid program. It’s not for assisted living, and it’s not for other senior cares.
Jason Long
Okay, and can I run more than one? I mean, is this like a one-off thing? Or like, Can I keep applying over and over and over again,
Kevin McCormack
It’s one of the things you can keep applying over and over again, as long as there’s money out there. And I’m sure that, you know, if you keep getting it, and no one else gets it, they might say, Hey, you know, leave a little for someone else. But yeah, it’s out there. Go for it. I think it’s a great, a great idea and a great way to, you know, help the residents in our long term care facilities. And if it’s not used, it’s just sitting out there. And what I think has happened is a lot of people don’t know about this program. I think of is a lot of nurse moment administrators. They wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but I’m glad we’re able to let people know.
Jason Long
Yeah, me too. I were to send this out to as many people as possible. So that’s, I think it’s a great thing. And he’s really, really good. And thank you so much for bringing this up. As a topic for our conversation today. It’s I think it’s meaningful, and it’s going to have a great impact for everybody out there. Anything else before we wrap up on this, this topic?
Kevin McCormack
No, I think that’s about it. Thank you very much, Jason, for taking the time and effort to put this together. We got
Jason Long
scores. Of course. Thank you. Thank you for for giving us giving everybody this great information. So if people want to reach you, how would they how would they reach out to you?
Kevin McCormack
They could send me an email. Kevin.McCormack@cantatahealth.com.
Jason Long
Perfect. All right. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And this article and this video will be up shortly.
Kevin McCormack
All right. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon. Bye.