You Asked: How are we expected to report for staff who perform different roles or duties throughout their day?
We Answered: Reporting is to be based on the employee’s primary role. It is understood that most roles have a variety of non-primary duties that are conducted throughout the day (e.g., helping when needed). Facilities shall still report just the total hours of that employee based on their primary role. However, CMS recognizes that staff may completely shift their primary role in a given day. For example, a nurse who spends the first four hours of a shift as the unit manager and the last four hours of a shift as a floor nurse. In these cases, facilities can change the designated job title and report four hours as a nurse with administrative duties and four hours as a nurse (without administrative duties).
For facilities that use the universal care workers, facilities must use a reasonable methodology to separate the time that the universal care worker spends performing their primary role, from their time that is spent performing other activities. For example, assume a universal care worker is paid to work 7.5 hours each day (excluding a 30-minute mealtime). Of the 7.5 hours, 5.5 hours are spent performing CNA-related duties, one hour is spent providing cooking services, and one hour is spent providing cleaning services. In this situation, the facility shall only report 5.5 hours of CNA time. Additionally, the facility may report one hour of housekeeping time, and one hour of “other services” time as reporting of these categories is optional (see Table 1 of the PBJ Policy Manual).
LeadingAge Ohio reminds providers that November 14th is the reporting deadline for 4th quarter. Additional guidance can be found in the PBJ Policy Manual and FAQ document.