Steven Littlehale

It’s time to give purchasing agents more room to operate in long-term care. Here’s why, and now here’s a group that can help their efforts.

“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Reimbursement Reform’ on their lips would be boiled in their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their heart!” Ebenezer Scrooge hissed after the conclusion of a CMS Open Door Forum.

We’re not even two months in, and some very interesting trends for the Patient Driven Payment Model are beginning to emerge.

I fervently believe that we both under-document and poorly assess cognition in our population.

A star of “The Sound of Music” probably wouldn’t be hitting the right notes if she were trying to be admitted to a U.S. nursing home nowadays.

“Tick, Tick … Boom!,” a lesser known musical by composer Jonathan Larson, who won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards for his musical “Rent,” opens with a ticking sound.

Through humor we directly confront Patient-Driven Payment Model myths and nonsense, as well as offer key “aha!” moments that ultimately lead to success under PDPM. Never wanting to hold back, or otherwise hold my tongue, I bring you “Portmanteau, a PDPM parody, part Deux!”

Recent changes to the Nursing Home Compare website leave a lot to be desired. I give them two out of a possible four stars.

It’s a wild time in long-term care — and a good time to embrace change.

Here’s how you use some humor to directly confront PDPM myths and nonsense, as well as suggest some authentic opportunities to provide and document better care.