30 Days Until Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) Reporting Begins

Electronic submission of staffing data through the Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) is required of all Long Term Care Facilities in 2016. July 1 begins the first date of data collection. You will have up to 45 days to submit data from July 1, 2016-September 30, 2016. The last day to submit data for the quarter is November 14, 2016. ALL nursing homes are encouraged to register to submit data to prepare to meet this requirement and maintain compliance.

AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine met with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and argued that the “on site” requirement for reporting Medical Director hours could lead to inaccurate reporting. In March of 2016, CMS amended this requirement to changes made to the PBJ manual, which includes the removal of “on site” when describing the way Medical Directors hours are to be reported.

The Medical Director section of the PBJ manual now reads:

“For medical directors, CMS understands it may be difficult to identify the exact hours a physician spends performing medical director activities versus primary care activities. Data reported should be auditable and able to be verified through either payroll, invoices, and/or tied back to a contract. Facilities must use a reasonable methodology for calculating and reporting the number of hours spent on-site conducting primary responsibilities. For example, if a medical director is contracted for a certain fee (e.g., per month) to participate in Quality Improvement meetings and review a certain number of medical records each month, the facility should have a reasonable methodology for converting those activities into the number of hours paid to work.”

The updates to the PBJ manual also include clarification regarding “how facilities may report hours for staff who switch primary roles within a day” and the revised and final PBJ policy manual and related information can be found here.  

PBJ Training Modules for an introduction to the PBJ system and step by step registration instruction are available on QTSO e-University, select the PBJ option https://www.qtso.com/webex/qiesclasses.php More information is available on the PBJ website.