PBJ “gotchas”

CMS system access

With the vast majority of SNFs submitting PBJ data in the weeks before the Nov. 14th deadline, CMS’ site was slow and difficult to access. Workarounds included accessing in off hours or logging into other regions. Plan ahead to avoid technical challenges before the Feb. 14 deadline!

Latest from CMS on PBJ

CMS released an updated errata on Dec. 30 and last updated the PBJ Policy Manual v2.2 on Jan. 5. Highlights include:

Employee IDs with special characters

CMS will change Employee ID’s that contain these characters. Double check your employee ID’s to maintain continuity for Turnover and Tenure:

* ‘ : ; / = ! ( ) # @

ezPBJ users with this issue have been notified.

Hire dates and turnover and tenure data

CMS clarified how to handle Hire Dates on transfers across facilities and for staff under multiple vendors. A warning note reinforces the notion that Tenure and Turnover will soon factor in to Quality ratings – stay tuned!

Rounding time

CMS clarified rounding rules for entering direct hours and minutes – with a conversion chart explaining how to round to the nearest 10ths. Rounding to the nearest 100th is also acceptable.

Corporate staff

CMS updated the policy to clarify that for corporate staff “only hours paid to work on-site shall be reported”

Notes from ezPBJ

As we enter the final 30 days before the Feb. 14 deadline, we expect to see issues on unmatched Hire Dates in the next round of reporting and have built additional Error Checks to ensure you submit consistent staff data and report the best tenure and turnover data you can.

Want to learn more? Give us a call at 585-210-9780 to schedule some one-on-one time.