CENSUS DISCREPANCIES EXPLAINED

1.    Where are the census numbers from? 

a.   Internal (PCC) Census: A report of daily totals that is sent to us each month by the person you designated during onboarding with Boosted Analytical. 

b.   MDS Census: Boosted Analytical downloads directly from IQIES. These numbers come from your MDS assessments that are submitted by your MDS team.

2.    What to do with discrepancy: 

You need to work with your MDS to reconcile the difference and ensure that all assessments are being submitted correctly. 

3.    Why is discrepancy an issue? 

a.   If your MDS is incorrectly high, it brings down your HPPD (as it seems that there are more residents, hence a lower staff to resident ratio) and therefore your staffing points and stars are unnecessarily reduced. 

b.   If your MDS is incorrectly low, it is a risk in case of a CMS audit. 

4.    If your internal census is higher than your MDS census: 

a.   This could be due to bed holds that are billed but the resident is not there and thus does not count towards MDS. This is ok, we just need an accurate report from you that does not include the bed holds. 

b.   It could also be due to a resident having been missing and not submitted. That is a problem with an audit.
 

5.    If your MDS census is higher than your internal census: 

This is often because a discharge assessment was not submitted for a resident who left. It is important to correct that. Running the MDS 3.0 Roster and Missing assessment report from iQIES can help. See this post for some more detail.

6.    How can you compare the residents in your internal census to the residents in your MDS census?

There is a report from iQIES called MDS 3.0 Activity report that can be helpful. Run the report from at least 12 months before the dates in question through the current date to ensure that you get all the necessary IDs.

This report contains both the residents’ names and their CMS-assigned IDs. We can send you a list of which IDs are included in the MDS census for each day, and you can use this report to match each ID to a name. Once you have the MDS census roster with names it can be easily compared to the list of residents in your internal census.