News | April 17, 2025 Celebrating Twenty Years of Service Stay current with healthcare and senior care provider regulatory trends, news and solutions delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter. Keep me informed Get Solutions Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. EXCELAS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARY May 17, 2005 – Excelas was born Excelas celebrating twenty years of service, literally shows how its work stacks up towering 4.5X taller than the Empire State Building! Launched in the Paper Era, Excelas tackled the tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone task of manually examining, interpreting, and organizing patient records to extract relevant information for legal cases and insurance review. In the two decades since, technology, including Excelas’ proprietary ZAXAS tool, accelerated Excelas’ delivery, efficiency, and accuracy. Excelas has been a leader in employing and advancing technology to excel in its performance outputs. As of March 2025, Excelas has reviewed over 20 million pages of medical records. That’s about one million pages a year, 83,333 pages a month, and 2,778 pages per day – for twenty years. Now imagine Excelas’ work visually: each stack of 1,000 pages of standard paper at 0.1 mm thick per sheet, would measure about 4 inches high. 1 stack = 1,000 pages = 4 inches high 20,000,000 pages divided by 1,000 pages/stacks = 20,000 stacks That’s nearly 1.25 miles high.The Empire State Building is 0.257 miles high. Excelas’ 20 million pages stacked next to the Empire State Building would tower over it 4.5 times! We’ll be sharing highlights of the last twenty years as we approach our anniversary in exactly one month! Engage with us on LinkedIn (if you’re not already) to learn what we do with all those files, as well as how and why we do it. Learn how we’re expanding services and upskilling technologies. Glad to bring you along! CMS Request for information from providers signals eliminating certain regulations and “burdens” in Medicare rules Newly proposed provider pay rules released April 11, 2025 included the specific request for information on Medicare deregulation across three main categories: streamlining requirements, reducing administrative burden of reporting and documentation, and identifying duplicative requirements. CMS also has caught providers’ eyes favorably with a newly proposed Value-Based Purchasing appeals process that would start in fiscal 2027. CMS withholds 2% of a provider’s pay to fund the VBP program, and nursing homes can earn back part of that through incentive pay if they hit specific benchmarks. Under the proposal, providers would be able to request an additional reconsideration if they first submit a valid review and correction request and are dissatisfied with the decision. Read the whole story STAFFING MANDATE Nursing home staffing requirements vacated by federal judge The Biden administration’s controversial nursing home staffing requirement was vacated by a federal judge in Texas, who ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had exceeded its statutory authority on the issue. It would have required nursing homes receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding to have at least one registered nurse on-site 24 hours a day plus other minimums including a total nurse staffing standard of 3.48 hours per resident per day. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas did not toss the entire final rule, but vacated the two provisions related to a 24/7 on-site nurse and minimum nursing hours per resident per day. The judge’s decision could be appealed by the HHS, though it isn’t entirely clear that it will in light of Republicans’ opposition, Oz’s lukewarm position and President Donald Trump’s wide-reaching order to slash federal regulations. Read the whole story ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT (ERM) Long-term care litigation: evolving challenges and proactive solutions Long Term Care (LTC) litigation has transformed into a highly focused and increasingly intimidating process for facilities. Providers can reduce litigation risk by understanding the LTC litigation process and implementing proactive systems and processes of care to address those care issues with the highest risk of legal action. The article, “The Anatomy of a Lawsuit” (2015, Sept. Provider) describes how LTC litigation has shifted over the past ten years: “Some law firms have refined the process to a science. In plaintiff-friendly states such as Kentucky, firms target specific care centers, scrutinizing records for deficiencies. These firms often partner with state attorneys general, as seen in New Mexico, where private firms are authorized to sue nursing centers on behalf of the attorney general’s office. Ads are then placed—on billboards, in local media, or online—encouraging residents or families to report concerns about care. Law firms also recruit current and former employees, framing the narrative as systemic issues stemming from corporate constraints. From there, graphic depictions of suffering are presented, leading to a barrage of lawsuits against the care center.” Facilities must move beyond a reactive stance and actively address common areas of legal risk. Familiarity with frequently cited issues and implementing best practices can significantly reduce exposure to litigation. [source: Proactive LTC Consulting] Excelas helps facilities become proactive rather than reactive, regarding common areas of legal risk, assessing exposures, and recommending best practices. Assessing risks on a departmental level is not sufficient in today’s environment. Long-term care providers must adopt overall ERM strategies. Enterprise risk management in long-term care Excelas helps organizations respond accurately and quickly to claims and litigation brought against them Partnering with attorneys, health care organizations, and insurance companies since 1995, Excelas provides medical legal analyses and tools for building winning defense strategies. When expertise, accuracy, reliability, and on-time delivery count, you can count on Excelas. You can always read all our newsletters online! Post Tags: eliminating regulations and Medicare rules enterprise risk management Excelas Excelas 20th anniversary long-term litigation staffing requirements vacated