The Quality Initiative…Let’s Move!

By Kiran Sreenivas, MS, CPHQ

AHCA Senior Research Analyst

While the Let’s Move! campaign was geared towards reducing obesity in children, did you know that some of its basic principles, such as eating healthy and increasing physical activity, apply to the functional outcome improvement work our members are doing with their residents?  

Skilled nursing care providers across the nation are tackling the challenge made by the IMPACT Act and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve residents’ self-care and mobility. Using the functional improvement measure added to Nursing Home Compare and the Five-Star Ratings in July 2016, the AHCA/NCAL Quality Initiative set a goal for providers to either achieve a 10% improvement from a baseline rate in the fourth quarter of 2015 or maintain a high-performance rate greater than or equal to 75%.

We now have enough data to examine the progress of providers, and they are doing quite well. Overall, as of September 2016, 46.8% of members have met either the improvement or performance target. Thirty-two percent of members have met the 10% improvement target, while 25% have met the performance greater than or equal to 75% target (see graph below).

Find out how your facility is doing on the functional outcome goal on LTC Trend Tracker, and see the latest national progress for all eight Quality Initiative goals here.