Advancing Excellence Leadership & CMS Administrator to Meet

VHCA (2/22/08)

AHCA and other leaders of the Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes campaign will meet with the Administrator of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Kerry Weems, to discuss plans to continue the campaign beyond 2008 and to enlist continued CMS support, including aligning Advancing Excellence's goals with the QIO's 9th scope of work.

The Advancing Excellence campaign recently reported on its survey of nursing facilities to ascertain the impact the campaign has had on quality improvement activity. Over seventeen hundred nursing facilities responded to at least one or more of the questions. Respondents reported that they have greatly increased quality improvement activity on one of the eight goals (48- 64 percent) or have started new quality activity on one of the goals because of the campaign (39 percent). For four of the goals - 3, 4, 5 and 8 - more than 75 percent of participating respondents have increased efforts or started new quality activity. The campaign, with over 6,500 enrolled nursing facilities, continues to ask participating nursing facilities to input first year data for the organizational goals (6, 7, 8) on the Campaign's website.