By Cathy Fratello
National Business Development Executive, PointRight
PointRight began assisting customers in California with QASP in 2017 but the QASP program has been around for over 5 years. The impetus came from our relationship with California Association of Health Facilities (CAHF) and an effort to help both their members and our customers manage their performance in this state-based quality program.
QASP Best Practices
Get Educated about QASP
Succeeding in QASP requires a true understanding of what drives the program and how these elements effect your daily, weekly and monthly activities. The QASP program is updated regularly and it is critical to know how these changes impact quality outcomes.
Learn from MDS Coding Errors
Coding the MDS accurately and appropriately is the foundation to successful QASP performance. Exploring the learnings behind coding errors and drilling down to root causes can help avoid these errors in future and identify opportunities for improvement.
Create a QASP Routine
Create a cadence for the team that impacts QASP to check in on performance, coding errors, learnings, etc. Ask these questions: Is the MDS accurate? Why is a resident triggering? How can your team be proactive? How can I drill down to the root cause?
What is QASP?
Let’s take a moment to define the program. The State of California’s Quality and Accountability Supplemental Payment (QASP) Program encourages and incentivizes Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) to implement quality improvement programs focused on a core set of performance metrics. SNFs are motivated and financially rewarded based on set qualification criteria, including significant improvements in outcomes and high performance on QASP metrics.
Have the Right QASP Tools
If managing MDS submissions is at the heart of QASP performance, having a reliable tool to verify coding accuracy is key. To ensure a proactive resident focused approach, PointRight offers a core set of Data Integrity Audit (DIA) tests that highlight QASP quality metrics. This allows for education on why a resident may have triggered an alert and an opportunity to catch coding errors.
Our QASP solution includes quality measure analysis with drilldowns to the resident level, as well as program and eligibility information. View real-time, simplified insights within a highly intuitive user experience and simplified workflow. Feedback from our customers indicates that this interface eliminates manual data aggregation and analysis.
QASP Takeaways
What I’ve learned over the last few years from working with our QASP customers is that the more you truly understand the QASP program and engage with your program management tools, the better your outcomes. In fact, facilities using PointRight QASP analytics achieved an average total payment that was 21% higher than non-PointRight facilities. PointRight clients outperformed on all the individual elements that make up QASP payments.
If you’d like to see for yourself, you can request a demo and see our QASP tools in action.
About the Author

Cathy Fratello
National Business Development Executive, PointRight