Long-term care facilities, staff and more than half the states should prepare immediately for changes to the Minimum Data Set, experts said in early September.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a draft of an update to MDS 3.0. Section G, used by many states to determine Medicaid reimbursement, is gone. The changes will be official in October 2023.

Gloria Brent, president and CEO of MDS Consultants, told McKnight’s it was a “bombshell” that A 0300 A, the Optional State Assessment, was removed. It’s needed by states that calculate RUG scores for payments.

“Without Section G, they don’t have a score,” said Brent. “If you take away the opportunity for the software to put in Section G, which would be A 0300, the OSA, what are the states going to do to generate an algorithm that calculates a score for the nursing homes to get reimbursed by Medicaid using Case Mix Index methodologies.”