Surveyor Guidance

Ask any nurse and he or she will likely tell you that state surveys are never pleasant times in an agency. The truth is that surveys cause stress and disruption in the best of circumstances. Complaint surveys are not uncommon and are not limited to agencies that deserve them. The state has a responsibility to investigate complaints. If a surveyor walked in your door tomorrow morning, would you be ready?

The following links are the CMS issued guidance for surveyors. This is what the state must survey in order to certify or recertify a home health agency or hospice. It is definitely worth the time to read through the files and look at your agency from the perspective of a surveyor. Even if you cannot demonstrate compliance to all standards, it will go a long way to have a plan in place before the surveyors arrive at your door.

This link is part of the CMS guidance for surveyors. It is often slow and doesn’t load completely. My suggestion is to save the PDF file once you have opened it to your hard drive.

http://cms.gov/manuals/Downloads/som107ap_b_hha.pdf

Here is the same thing for hospice:

http://cms.gov/manuals/Downloads/som107ap_m_hospice.pdf

UPDATE:  a reader just sent this comment:

FYI for Hospices:

Below is the link to the Hospice interim surveyor interpretive guidelines that provide the most recent guidance related to the Hospice CoPs:

http://www.cms.gov/SurveyCertificationGenInfo/downloads/SCLetter09-19.pdf