Your nursing facility or home care agency may track staff training on a calendar-year basis or individual rolling-year basis, but either way you need to ensure that all appropriate training requirements and documentation of training for your staff are met.

It is important to remember that the regulations and requirements outlined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and/or the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) are not the only training requirements mandated for your staff. Other agencies also have oversight over you as an employer in Minnesota.

Each year Care Providers of Minnesota provides summary documents attempting to be all-inclusive of the staff training requirements our members operate under. Click on the following links to view (and print) the staff training requirements for your type of long-term care operation:

• Nursing Facility Staff Training Requirements

• Class F Home Care Agency Staff Training Requirements

• Class A (licensed-only) Home Care Agency Staff Training Requirements

New in 2011 for nursing facility providers:

1. Section 6121 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 amended Sections 1819(f)(2)(A)(i)(I)) and 1919(f)(2)(A)(i)(I) of the Social Security Act. The amendment requires that nurse aide training include initial and annual dementia management and patient abuse prevention training for all nurse aides. This means that you must incorporate material on dementia management and abuse prevention into your annual in-service plans.

2. Training of nurses and other direct patient care workers on the use of safe patient handling equipment is required under the Minnesota Safe Patient Handling Program (182.6553), both initially when patient handling equipment arrives at the facility and periodically afterwards.

If you are aware of other Federal or Minnesota staff training requirements that are not included in our training list, please forward that information, along with the text of the requirement, to Doug Beardsley at dbeardsley@careproviders.org so that we keep our list up-to-date and accurate!

Doug Beardsley
952.851.2489
dbeardsl@careproviders.org