With six quarters of PBJ-based Staffing Five-Star ratings, CMS has created a nationwide apples-to-apples data set that is catching the attention of researchers and academics.

Harvard and Vanderbilt researchers published a study in Health Affairs this July. Their analysis of  PBJ data found large daily staffing fluctuations, low weekend staffing, and daily staffing levels below CMS expectations.

SNF news providers shared their takes on the Health Affairs research – including Skilled Nursing News and McKnight’s.  But this research was also publicized by other media such as Beckers Hospital Review,  HealthLeaders, Modern Healthcare, the National Law Review and a variety of local newspapers.

Following last year’s widely publicized Kaiser Health News / New York Times article, we can certainly expect ongoing scrutiny of Payroll-Based Journal data.

Did you know your PBJ data is publicly available?

Every quarter – about the same time CMS updates Nursing Home Compare with the latest Five Star ratings – they will also publish the every facility’s PBJ data to https://data.cms.gov/ – Researchers, media and the public can look up total daily hours worked in the the key PBJ jobs and even your daily census numbers.

Not sure what they can see? ezPBJ has you covered. We’ve integrated the PBJ public data and created tools for you to compare and benchmark your facility – under the Benchmark menu. Even if you are not an ezPBJ customer, you can sign up for a free Essentials Account to see your data the way the public can see it.