Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) that fail to submit required calendar year 2019 quality data to CMS under the SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP), are subject to the QRP penalty and will have their Medicare payment rates reduced by two percentage points from October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2021. The majority of the reporting is done via the MDS assessment. As a result, most facilities meet the requirements and avoid the 2% payment reduction. CMS posted non-compliance reports in facility CASPER folders in QIES on July 13, 2020.
SNFs may file for reconsideration if they believe the finding of non-compliance is in error, or they have evidence of the impact of extraordinary circumstances that prevented timely submission of data. To apply for reconsideration, the SNF must receive a CMS letter of non-compliance. A SNF disagreeing with the payment reduction decision may submit a request for reconsideration to CMS within 30 days from the date at the top of the non-compliance notification letter distributed electronically using QIES. CMS will not accept any requests submitted after the 30 days deadline.
The deadline for submitting Reconsideration requests is midnight on August 18, 2020. More information is available on the CMS Quality Reporting webpage.
