PBJ Quarterly Reporting Deadline is May 15

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Jonathan Lips

The deadline for submission of Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) data for the reporting period Jan. 1–March 31 is May 15. Timely and accurate submission of PBJ data is critical, because CMS uses the data to calculate staffing measures in Nursing Home Compare and the Five-Star Quality Rating System. The following rules apply: 

Providers that fail to submit any staffing data by the required deadline will receive a one-star rating for overall staffing and RN staffing for the quarter. Data submitted or corrected after the deadline has passed is not used.

Providers that submit staffing data indicating that there were four or more days in the quarter with no RN staffing hours (job codes 5-7) on days when there were one or more residents in the carfe centers will receive a one-star rating for overall staffing and RN staffing for the quarter. CMS lowered this threshold from seven days in a quarter to four days in a quarter, effective April 24.

Staffing ratings are no longer being suppressed for care centers that have five or more days with residents and no nurse staffing hours reported.

As shown by the second and third bullet points above, CMS is placing heavy emphasis on RN staffing, and care centers are strongly advised to verify RN coverage (8 hours each day) prior to final submission of data for the quarter. 

Some care centers may, in fact, have no RN hours to report on four or more days in a quarter. But in other cases, a setting might inadvertently fail to report RN hours that were actually worked: a RN normally scheduled Monday-Friday might have traded a weekday for a weekend day; or that same RN might have picked up a weekend day in addition to his or her normal schedule; or a RN whose hours are normally reported as administrative might provide direct care on a given day, such that the hours could be reported differently.

The Casper Reporting User’s Guide includes a chapter on PBJ Reports, which would assist providers to conduct a RN hours verification. See the section related to the 1703D Job Title Report, which would allow you select job titles and enter dates; by examining the resulting report you could identify dates without, say, 8 hours of RN time, and you could then consult with staff at your setting to see whether there were actual RN hours worked on those dates but that inadvertently had not been captured for submission to the PBJ system.

CMS encourages providers to submit data early so they can correct errors if needed. CMS has previously noted that it may take up to 24 hours for a nursing home to receive a validation report, and the agency urges settings to allow time for this and check CASPER for the validation.