CMS systems used by nursing homes and swing bed units undergo digital modernization
How do you measure the quality of care that patients in Medicare and/or Medicaid certified nursing homes and swing bed units receive—in an accurate, consistent, and reliable way?
To address this need, we supported the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on a large- scale, custom software development and data migration effort that modernizes the collection of patient-level assessment information—critical to identifying health problems, care coordination/planning, and ensuring quality of care for patients throughout the country.
This patient assessment instrument known as the Minimum Data Set (MDS) is part of the federally mandated process for clinical assessment of all patients in Medicare and/or Medicaid certified nursing homes and swing bed units. Data submitted in the MDS helps CMS measure providers’ compliance with complex assessment policies and requirements and is one data source used to measure the quality of care provided to the patients.
Since the successful migration of the MDS submission and reporting function into iQIES in April 2023, the new system supports a more efficient process to submit required MDS data to CMS by nursing home and swing bed providers nationwide.
Providers regularly assess their nursing home and swing bed patients, collecting comprehensive information to identify issues, develop patient-centered plans of care, and promote quality of care. These assessments occur on a set schedule throughout the year and are also triggered by milestone events such as an admission or discharge. Strict policies govern the MDS clinical assessment process, and the information collected results in 17.5 million records annually from participating nursing homes and swing bed providers into the Agency’s new Internet Quality Improvement and Evaluation System (iQIES), which we successfully modernized.
To build this new data collection submission system and associated reporting, we re-platformed the legacy QIES application into AWS, securely migrating nearly half a terabyte of sensitive legacy MDS assessment and patient data into iQIES.
We also embraced Agile, DevOps, and product management methodologies to modernize the patient assessment completion and submission process. This approach, which blends human-centered design with a relentless focus on delivering mission value, translates directly into strategic benefits for CMS—helping the agency drive innovation, tackle health system challenges, and promote value-based, person-centered care.
Additionally, data submitted in the MDS supports CMS initiatives such as identifying poorly performing nursing homes, providing better information to the public on nursing home quality, and accelerating the appropriate use of data to deliver on CMS’ mission to serve the public while protecting security and privacy.
Through the successful migration of the MDS data collection/processing and reporting functionality into iQIES, CMS continues to demonstrate its commitment to promoting quality care for nursing home and swing bed patients nationwide. For more information on CMS’s survey and certification system modernization, read our iQIES client story.
