The Senate has confirmed Marilyn Tavenner as the new director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Providers must provide written warning to Medicare patients that their treatment may not be covered before treatment can begin, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has said in a memorandum.

Some nurses come by these skills naturally, but very few have had formal leadership training. Nurses are better able to step into leadership when directors of nursing (DONs) focus on developing their leadership skills by giving them opportunities to take on new responsibilities and then sharpen the nurses’ skills by providing timely, accurate, problem-solving-oriented feedback in the context of a supportive relationship.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proclaimed recently that its two-year-old Fraud Prevention System (FPS) is a fruitful investment with a high rate of return, but Congress is not as sanguine about the agency’s fraud-fighting efforts as the agency appears to be.

The recent events in Watertown, Mass., as the hunt for perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing ensued, and the plant explosion in West, Texas, that impacted a nursing home reminds us that providers must be ready for anything and everything.

Social media is a vital part of everyone’s lives today on both a professional and a personal level. For human resource professionals, however, there exists some confusion about what constitutes a permissible social media policy or rule and what an employee can safely “post” on a social media website about his or her employer without being subject to discipline and/or termination.

Taste is impacted by sense of smell, which also declines significantly as one ages. Thirty percent of people between the ages of 70 and 80 have a problem with their sense of smell. Smell that declines with age is called presbyosmia, and it is not preventable.

Long term care and post-acute facility residents are individuals whose personalities and feelings must be considered in an effort to keep them safe and happy. That is the lesson of culture change, and facilities have embraced it in efforts to ensure quality care and resident satisfaction. Now facilities increasingly have begun to apply this lesson to staff development and motivation with similar results.

Oral problems experienced by older adults are preventable and can often be detected early. They are not the direct result of aging. Dental caries and periodontal disease are plaque-related, preventable oral diseases. Although these diseases are generally not life-threatening or seriously impairing for most older adults, they can have an effect on the management of medical conditions, general health, nutrition, and quality of life (Blanco-Johnson, 2012).

The final seven of this year’s 20 To Watch illustrate the best of long term and post-acute care. In the third and final round of Provider’s inaugural 20 To Watch feature are two administrators, a director of health management, two chief executive officers, a dementia care program director, and an owner/administrator.