On June 25, 2020, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued QSO 20-34 announcing the end of the blanket waiver for 42 CFR 483.70(q), which requires all nursing facilities to submit staffing data through the Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) system. Nursing facilities must submit their required staffing data for Calendar Quarter 2 (April – June) 2020 through the PBJ system by August 14, 2020.
The CMS memo also announced that on July 29, 2020, staffing measures and star ratings will be held constant based on the data submitted for Calendar Quarter 4 (October – December) 2019. The CMS memo recognizes that the waiver of the requirement to submit staffing data prior to August 14 prevented some nursing facilities from improving their ratings since their last submission. CMS therefore announced that it will remove all one-star staffing rating downgrades, and instead, those nursing facilities will have their measures and ratings temporarily suppressed.
Staffing measures and star ratings will be updated once again in October 2020, based on the data submitted by August 14, 2020.