The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced revisions to its August 6, 2024 Memo (Admin Info: 24-21-NH) in a new Administrative Memo. The Memo states that CMS is postponing the iQIES Survey & Certification (S&C) Nursing Home (NH) release scheduled for February 2025.
Since May 2021, State Survey Agencies and CMS locations have been transitioning to iQIES, an internet-based system which includes Survey & Certification functions. The phased transition plan started with Home Health Agencies, and the launch for nursing homes was scheduled for early 2025. The associated training, which covers key topics, including managing a survey, the LTCSP and Electronic Plan of Corrections (ePOCs) has been postponed as a result of this delay. Per the new Memo, “Revised: Training Plan for iQIES Launch in Long-Term Care” (Admin Info: 25-01-NH), the training schedule has been removed, and deadlines/ schedules relating to the remainder of 2024 have been removed from this Memo.
There is no reason provided for this delay, but the scheduled Train-the-Trainer sessions for the LTCSP were supposed to take place over a 3-month period ending in December 2024. That would leave a couple of months to train the rest of the surveyors, so this may indicate a delay to at least the back-half of 2025. However, it’s unclear if this delay will mean training is rescheduled within tighter timeframes to reduce the time to launch, or if surveyors will continue to use the current process for the foreseeable future.
