DMAS Wage Survey Time

VHCA (1/25/2008)

In a letter mailed this week to providers, Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) is requesting that nursing facilities provide wage data to support the development of inflation factors for the nursing home rate setting function.  Please note that this survey is mandatory and must be completed by all nursing facilities participating in Medicaid.  The data is necessary to support the development of rates.  The part of the survey related to wage data is identical to last year’s survey.

Parts IX and X of the survey are new this year.  The Department has worked in conjunction with an Advisory Committee of nursing facility provider representatives and consumer advocates on developing a Pay for Performance plan for nursing homes.  The Advisory Committee recommended that one of the performance criteria should be nursing staff turnover and/or retention.  In order to develop a performance measure prototype for staff turnover and/or retention, the Department is requesting relevant information in Part IX. 

In the past, the Department has been asked to calculate the number of nursing hours per resident per day.  The Department has used the wage survey for nursing hours and cost report data for the number of bed days.  The time period for some of the cost reports, however, is not always consistent with the time period used in the wage survey.  In order to perform this calculation using a consistent data source for all nursing homes, DMAS is requesting that each nursing home report the total number of bed days for the twelve-month period ended December 31, 2007 in Part X. 

The final page of the survey allows for the calculation of some of the results that will be used in the calculation of inflation factors.  It is not required that you complete this last page, but it is encouraged.  In previous surveys, some data contained errors that would have been obvious had the facility completed the calculations that are carried out on the last page.  For example, if the product obtained by dividing CNA employee salaries per paid hour by the number of hours worked plus paid leave hours is very low or very high, it may reveal a reporting error in salaries or in the number of hours.

DMAS has established the ability for facilities to electronically submit their data directly.  This has been very successful in the last few years and providers are strongly encouraged to utilize this resource.  DMAS encourages facilities to report the data by visiting the Department’s website, What’s New section (DMAS anticipates that this will be available by January 29th). For any provider that is unable to utilize the web submission tool, a paper form has been provided. 

The survey is due by March 3rd.  If you have any questions, please contact Michael Lupien at DMAS at 804.786.3673.