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Mileage Rate Increase---
Good news for our employees! Effective July 1, 2011, the IRS has increased the mileage reimbursement rate. The rate has been increased from 50 cents per mile to 55.5 cents per mile. Our policy has always been to pay staff the full maximum allowable IRS rate. Nutricopia continues to support our employees in the field and we understand the dollars spent on travel. Mileage reimbursements are never taxed. So, you get the full amount which is always nice!
Performance Evaluations Move to ON-TAP---
Under the direction of Sonja Lorraine, RD our new performance evaluation process has been revamped and updated. You received a copy of it in your Nutricopia staff handbook and now it is ready for use in ON-TAP. How does it work? We begin the process by emailing you when your review is due. You then access your personal profile area in ON-TAP and complete your self-evaluation. After your self-evaluation is done, management will complete our evaluation of your work. We have a scoring process based on a scale of 1-5 for each area. There are five categories which include:
· Professionalism
· Clinical Skills
· Education and Leadership
· Communication
At the end of the evaluation, you will receive a score from both your self-evaluation and our review. Our main goal for revamping this system was to ensure we have clear employee expectations including how you can grow within our corporation. Be sure to ask questions regarding your evaluation as the scoring is innovative and none of us will ever score a perfect 5.0 rating.
Nutricopia is a technologically forward-thinking company which complements the dispersed locations you, our valuable staff dietitians, work in. ON-TAP has been conceived and custom built to enhance Nutricopia performance for our clients and facilitate communication with our staff.
State of California Budget---
The Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed the 2011-12 California state budget on June 27th. This budget provides varying amounts of painful cuts to nursing-facility providers. This budget has an assumption of $4 billion in higher revenues in 2012. If the money fails to materialize, $2.5 billion in additional cuts are automatically "triggered".
The 10-percent Medi-Cal payment reduction for skilled-nursing providers is temporary and time-limited for 14-months retroactive to June 1, 2011. Payment reductions require CMS approval; therefore, actual implementation would likely not occur before October 1, 2011 at the earliest. However, when and if approved, the payment reductions would be retroactive to June 1, 2011.
There are other state and federal laws in effect which trigger rate increases, new fees and rate reductions. Another new provision is the start of supplemental payments to facilities, based on quality benchmarks. For this reason, you will likely see a strengthened focus on quality areas such as reducing pressure ulcers. At this time it is impossible to really determine what facility providers will be paid for the residents in their care.
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