Zimmet Opens Conference with Focus on Data Truth

(This is a brief take on the opening of the Zimmet Conference, which will be followed by complete coverage over the remainder of this week and next.)

The start of the annual Zimmet Conference on Aug. 12 featured a keynote by Marc Zimmet, CEO of Zimmet Healthcare Services Group, on the need for a more realistic, accurate set of reporting data on the skilled nursing sector, saying the way in which the feds and states reimburse facilities and figure costs are maddeningly inconsistent and lacking.

In a wide-ranging presentation, Zimmet lamented the diminished status of Medicare Cost Reports as new payment systems over the last decades have obscured their need, much to the detriment of getting to the true cost providing care facility by facility.

He also said the way in which skilled nursing is defined, the very words used to make sense of the complexities of understanding the payment, quality metrics, and care protocols for the nation’s seniors is wrong.

“You can't use the terms that we've been using to describe the industry. The industry. That is the number one term we're using wrong…Skilled nursing has almost 15,000 facilities active that all share the state-federal designation, but they are as alike as, not even apples and oranges,” Zimmet said.

He touched on subject after subject in need of a clean take to reflect the reality of doing business in the sector. One such area is occupancy.  

“Occupancy is great, if it's a snapshot,” Zimmet said, saying for example if a facility has 100 resident and 100 beds, then they have 100 percent occupancy. But if you have 100 residents and 200 beds, you are at 50 percent, but if 100 are decertified, you’re back to full occupancy. “It is not a measure of demand. It is a snapshot. It tells us nothing,” he said.

On Medicare Cost Reports, Zimmet said it’s “probably the most neglected document in the history of documents, but I will tell you that it should be the most important document.”

He noted the lack pf institutional memory in the modern skilled nursing reimbursement trade when it comes to understanding what the Cost Reports started out as and how they were meant to be prepared and used.

“And here's where we get into the problem. We've got three decades, four systems [RUGS, PDPM, et al], and one base rate that was never rebuilt,” Zimmet said.

More on the presentation and conference to come. . .

Comments or questions on this article? Contact Patrick Connole at pconnole@parkplacelive.com.