CMS Issues Draft Guide to QAPI in Nursing Homes

​The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a draft of QAPI at a Glance, a guide to help nursing homes establish a quality assurance and performance improvement (QAPI) program, in a December 14, 2012, CMS memorandum to state survey agency directors. The guide illustrates QAPI in action and describes the five elements of QAPI and action steps for implementing it. The five elements of QAPI are design and scope; governance and leadership; feedback, data systems, and monitoring; performance improvement projects; and systematic analysis and systemic action. The 12 action steps are establishing leadership accountability, taking a deliberate approach to teamwork, performing a self-assessment, identifying guiding principles, developing a QAPI plan, conducting an awareness campaign, developing a strategy for collecting and using QAPI data, identifying gaps and opportunities, prioritizing quality and performance improvement opportunities, planning and conducting performance improvement projects, performing root-cause analyses, and taking systemic action.