Nursing Home Quality: CMS Should Improve Efforts to Monitor Implementation of the Quality Indicator Study

摘要

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is responsible for ensuring that nursing homes receiving federal funding meet federal quality standards. CMS contracts with state survey agencies to conduct periodic inspections of nursing homes using a CMS-developed survey process. Weaknesses in the survey process led CMS to develop and begin implementing the Quality Indicator Survey (QIS), a new electronic survey. CMS developed the QIS to achieve several objectives, including improving the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of the survey process. CMS expects the QIS to be implemented nationally by 2018. We examined the extent to which CMS (1) evaluates whether progress is being made in meeting the objectives of the QIS and (2) monitors and facilitates states implementation of the QIS. To do this, GAO reviewed relevant CMS documents, including CMS-commissioned studies of the QIS, policies, and guidance.