Comtracts is the best contract management tool for nursing facilities let’s go over how and why:
Question: Do you know where your contracts are? Can you find your contracts?
Question: Do you have a process to review contracts review every year? Can you document that the review took place?
Question: Do you have Business Associate Agreements with your contractors and vendors? Can you find those agreements?
Answer: Comtracts’ contract management platform allows facilities to document and manage contractual relationships in an efficient, economical and easy to use platform.
Federal Survey Requirements for Managing Contracts
Federal regulatory requirements and survey guidance now require nursing facilities to maintain and evaluate contracts, memorandums of understanding, third party agreements for goods, services or equipment. Having a system in place for managing, supervising and reviewing nursing facility contracts is more important than ever. 1 Survey requirements for contracts are based upon a nursing facility’s responsibility to provide necessary care and services for residents. Nursing facilities must also recognize the fact that these goods and services are often provided by others under arrangement through contracts.
Not having a contract management system in place to review, assess, and supervise contracts can subject a facility to fines. Surveyor guidance requires contract review on a yearly basis as part of the annual facility assessment. In other words, a nursing facility must document that it has reviewed its contracts on a yearly basis. In addition, require written agreements for services. Also, agreements need to include language that the services will be provided consistently with professional standards and in a timely way. For example, a contract for dental services should include dental services that will meet the accepted standards of dental practice. In addition the dentistry be provided not only on a regular basis but also when needed by individual patients. In sum, all contracts, agreements, and arrangements for services, goods, and equipment are also required to be in writing.
Business Associate Agreements
Additionally, all nursing facility contracts with vendors and service providers should include Business Associate Agreements. It is important to require contractors to follow nursing facility’s Privacy Plan for Protected Health Information. Above all, protect information in a manner consistent with HIPAA/HI-TECH requirements and address how breaches will be managed and reported. Document compliance with standards to meet federal requirements. Nursing facilities should also maintain a contract management system that allows supervision, monitoring and review in an easy and convenient manner. When a surveyor asks to see a contract, a nursing facility ought to be able to produce the contract document and evidence that the contract has been reviewed and performance evaluated. Comtracts’ secure cloud-based contract management platform allows nursing facilities to control their contracts and document compliance with federal regulations.
Next nursing facilities should have a cloud-based contract management platform that organizes contracts by vendor type, provides automated notifications of important dates, and allows administration to document the annual review of each contract. Comtracts’ contract management platform provides secure cloud-based storage that allows remote access to contracts. With automatic notifications, nursing facility administrators and staff will be notified by email or text of important date in a contract’s life. Maintaining Business Associate Agreements is easy with the contract management platform.
Increasing regulatory requirements mean that nursing facilities must pay attention to their contractual relationships. Contractual relationships require management and supervision. Comtracts contract management platform is a tool that helps nursing facilities accomplish these tasks and document compliance in a simple and cost-effective way.
Comtracts can help manage all of the above in fast, efficiently, and with the ease of our user friendly platform.
1 State Operations Manual : Appendix PP—Guidance to Surveyors for Long Term Care Facilities https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Manuals/downloads/som107ap_pp_guidelines_ltcf.pdf
