New Mexico Nursing Home Administrators Board
Licensees can now submit mailing address changes and request duplicate licenses online. Step-by-step instructions on the web pages will guide you through the process. Mailing address changes submitted online will be reflected in the licensing system 24 hours after they are submitted. Click here to begin.
The primary purpose and obligation of the Board is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public by providing laws and regulations to govern the practice of nursing home administration and protect the citizens of New Mexico from unprofessional, unscrupulous, or incompetent nursing home facility administrators (NHA).
Standards and Criteria for Licensing and Regulation
The administration of a long-term care and hospital-based skilled nursing care facility [nursing home] is very complex. These facilities are governed and measured by a very strict set of state and federal regulations and criteria. The NHA is the main person responsible for the health, safety, and welfare of the employees, residents, and residents’ families in a nursing home facility. It is imperative for the NHA to be well versed in those regulations, very familiar with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA), and comprehend “patient outcomes”.
The NHA Board qualifies candidates for licensure and administers a national standard’s exam, which tests to ensure that NHAs are at least minimally competent to practice nursing home administration. NHAs must be skilled and knowledgeable in the following areas:
- Resident Care Management: Monitoring quality of care/life issues. Planning, implementing and evaluating services provided to and for residents such as nursing services; social services; food services; medical services; therapeutic recreational and activity programs; medical records services; pharmaceutical services; and rehabilitation programs.
- Personnel Management: Recruitment, training, evaluation and retention of qualified individuals to provide resident care and services. Planning, implementation, and evaluation of personnel policies and employee health and safety programs.
- Financial Management: Developing and managing a budget for the facility to allocate fiscal resources. Monitoring financial performance, and developing and managing a financial audit and reporting system. Preventing fraudulent use of taxpayer monies (i.e. Medicare/Medicaid).
- Environmental Management: Planning, implementing, and evaluating a system for maintaining and improving buildings, grounds, and equipment. Providing a clean, attractive, safe, homelike environment for residents, staff, and visitors.
- Regulatory Management: Planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating policies and procedures to maintain compliance with federal and state laws and regulations and with the directives of governing entities.
- Organizational Management: Observing, monitoring, and evaluating outcomes of all programs, policies, and procedures of the facility to ensure effectiveness. Developing and monitoring a process for communicating with residents, families, staff, volunteers, and governing entities.
Nursing Home Facility Regulation
The Board does not regulate the nursing home facilities themselves. The facilities are regulated by the Department of Health’s Health Facility Licensing and Certification Bureau, which has a central office in Santa Fe and can be contacted at 505-476-9025.
70-80% of a facility’s revenue comes from Medicaid, of which the federal government pays 73% and the State pays 27% (1997 figures). In order for a facility to be “federally certified” to receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement, the facility NHA must be licensed by the State. The federal government currently requires States to implement and enforce standards for NHAs in federally certified nursing care facilities. Without compliance by the State to these requirements, the federal government would not reimburse facilities for the care of the Medicare or Medicaid-qualified residents.
In a facility, the NHA is not only responsible for compliance to state and federal regulations, the NHA is also responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. The NHA is the single-most important person in a facility who can determine whether or not Medicare or Medicaid fraud is being committed, or who can prevent or commit fraud. New Mexico currently licenses eighty-seven (87) facilities that require a licensed NHA. The NHAs of those facilities are responsible for more than $200 million Medicare/Medicaid tax dollars a year. The Board’s licensing, regulatory, and enforcement functions are crucial to the protection of the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of New Mexico.
Licensing Process Summary
Licensing agencies, the Board included, usually require a candidate to provide documentation such as a birth certificate, letters of reference, photo, verifications of licensure in other licensing jurisdictions, resume, completed application form, applicable fees, affidavits regarding disciplinary history, and so forth, which the Board uses to qualify the candidate. The Board also requires that candidates for licensure provide official proof of completion of a Bachelors degree program. The candidate must successfully pass the national standards examination developed by the National Association of Boards of Examiners for Nursing Home Administrators (NAB).
Candidates by Reciprocity/Endorsement must provide the same documentation as candidates by examination. If they are currently licensed in good standing [no disciplinary history] in another licensing jurisdiction that had the same licensing requirements as New Mexico’s at the time the candidate was licensed in the other jurisdiction, the candidate does not have to sit for the NAB/NHA exam again and can be licensed as soon as the application process is complete.
As a member of NAB, the Board receives quarterly Disciplinary Data Reports that list nursing home administrators who have been disciplined by licensing jurisdictions. The Board checks all candidates for licensure against this report.
For more information contact:
Nursing Home Administrators Board
2550 Cerrillos Road
Santa Fe, NM 87505
(505)476-4660
NursingHomeAdminBd@state.nm.u
