CMS data system for post-acute care down for five days next month

Inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long-term care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health and hospice providers will not be able to submit data to the Quality Improvement and Evaluation System from 8 p.m. ET March 16 through March 21 because the system will be down, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Post-acute providers use the QIES to submit patient assessment data such as the IRF Patient Assessment Instrument and certain quality measure data, and to access Certification And Survey Provider Enhanced Reports. Critical access hospitals with swing beds also use the system. CMS urges affected providers to plan any business needs around the downtime. For example, because IRFs must submit IRF-PAI data by 27 days after discharge, they should plan to submit early any IRF-PAI data that would be due during the QIES downtime.