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Ascension is seeking a Senior Long-Term Care Survey Process Lead / Subject Matter Expert to provide senior technical and operational expertise supporting CMS’s Long-Term Care Survey Process. We are looking for an experienced healthcare regulatory professional who understands not only how nursing home surveys are conducted, but also how Federal requirements, survey methodology, State Survey Agency operations, facility practices, surveyor workflows, data, system business rules, and policy changes interact to shape an effective national survey program.

This is not a traditional nursing-home surveyor position. The successful candidate will help CMS research, develop, test, validate, refine, and monitor the processes used to assess nursing home compliance with Federal Long-Term Care requirements. The individual will serve as a trusted subject matter resource on the Long-Term Care Survey Process (LTCSP), Risk-Based Survey (RBS), nursing home survey operations, Federal Requirements for Participation, survey data, and the business requirements necessary to support survey functionality in the Internet Quality Improvement and Evaluation System (iQIES).

The ideal candidate brings substantial direct experience with nursing-home survey processes and can move comfortably between policy, operations, analytics, system requirements, testing, and stakeholder engagement. This individual should be capable of examining a proposed survey-process change, determining how it will affect surveyor workflow and facility evaluation, identifying the data and system implications, designing a method to test it, evaluating the results, and providing CMS with clear, defensible recommendations.

Ascension is particularly interested in candidates who are analytical, highly organized, self-directed, intellectually curious, and comfortable operating in an environment where requirements evolve in response to regulations, policy changes, CMS priorities, user feedback, and analytical findings. The successful candidate should be able to independently investigate complex problems, distinguish policy issues from system or process issues, develop practical alternatives, communicate recommendations clearly to senior stakeholders, and manage multiple technical workstreams with limited day-to-day supervision.

Position Summary

The Senior Long-Term Care Survey Process Lead / Subject Matter Expert will provide technical leadership across the development, modification, testing, validation, implementation, and post-release monitoring of CMS nursing-home survey processes.

The role will support both the established Long-Term Care Survey Process and Risk-Based Survey, as well as initial surveys, revisit surveys, abbreviated standard or complaint surveys, and other survey types identified by CMS. Responsibilities will include assessing regulatory and policy changes; developing or revising survey concepts and supporting documents; establishing testing criteria and case studies; participating in remote and onsite testing; reviewing test results; supporting validation of survey-system algorithms; developing iQIES business requirements; analyzing survey data; reviewing surveyor and stakeholder inquiries; examining iQIES Help Desk trends; preparing presentations and technical materials; and recommending process improvements.

A central responsibility of the position is translating between policy intent, surveyor operations, survey data, and technology requirements. The Senior SME must be able to determine how a regulatory or operational change should work in practice, how surveyors should experience the change, what information iQIES must capture or process, how the resulting functionality should be tested, and what data should be monitored after implementation.

The individual will work closely with CMS personnel and may collaborate with State Survey Agencies, other CMS contractors, survey professionals, technical teams, and other stakeholders involved in developing and implementing nursing-home survey processes.

Position’s Anticipated Day-to-Day Activities

The Senior Long-Term Care Survey Process Lead / Subject Matter Expert will be expected to:

• Lead subject matter analysis supporting the development, modification, and continuous improvement of CMS Long-Term Care survey processes, including LTCSP and RBS.
• Interpret Federal Long-Term Care Requirements for Participation, applicable survey guidance, policy changes, CMS initiatives, and other program developments to identify impacts on survey methodology and surveyor workflows.
• Evaluate proposed changes to nursing-home survey processes for operational feasibility, consistency with Federal requirements, surveyor usability, data implications, and potential unintended consequences.
• Develop detailed work plans for survey-process development or revision activities, including milestones, affected process components, testing requirements, validation activities, monitoring activities, and supporting documents.
• Identify survey forms, guidance, business rules, system functions, supporting documentation, analytical requirements, and other process components that must be developed or revised when CMS implements survey-process changes.
• Design testing approaches, test criteria, performance measures, use cases, and case studies for proposed LTCSP, RBS, or other nursing-home survey-process changes.
• Participate as an SME in remote and, when assigned, onsite testing of proposed survey concepts and process changes.
• Observe surveyor interaction with proposed processes during testing and identify usability issues, workflow barriers, inconsistent interpretations, data concerns, or operational risks requiring refinement.
• Document testing findings, identified issues, root causes, operational implications, and recommended corrective or alternative approaches.
• Validate proposed system algorithms and survey-related business rules before survey-process releases and, when directed, assess algorithm performance following implementation.
• Compare intended survey-policy logic with system behavior and analytical results to determine whether algorithms and business rules are functioning as expected.
• Recommend adjustments to survey concepts, algorithms, business rules, workflow requirements, or supporting materials based on testing and analytical findings.
• Develop clear, traceable business requirements and functional specifications supporting new or revised survey-process functionality within iQIES.
• Translate nursing-home survey policy and operational requirements into sufficiently detailed specifications for use by CMS and supporting technical teams.
• Analyze nursing-home survey information using available CMS data sources and analytical environments to evaluate survey accuracy, consistency, effectiveness, and emerging process issues.
• Review data derived from resources such as the CCSQ Data & Analytics environment, Minimum Data Set information, iQIES Dashboard, Nursing Home Care Compare, CASPER, and other CMS-authorized information sources as applicable to assigned analyses.
• Conduct post-release surveillance to identify trends, anomalies, unintended effects, potential process deficiencies, or opportunities for survey-process improvement.
• Prepare white papers, technical analyses, testing summaries, validation findings, monitoring reports, recommendations, and other decision-support materials for CMS.
• Review survey-process questions received from surveyors, State Survey Agencies, stakeholders, or other authorized sources and develop technically supported draft responses for CMS review.
• Research complex survey questions to determine whether the underlying issue involves policy interpretation, survey methodology, business requirements, system behavior, training, or another operational factor.
• Review survey-related iQIES Help Desk tickets and identify recurring issues, patterns, or potential policy and process problems requiring CMS attention.
• Develop recommended actions for recurring Help Desk or survey-process issues and discuss significant trends during scheduled CMS meetings.
• Prepare presentations, visual aids, exercises, technical tools, and supporting materials appropriate for surveyors, CMS personnel, State Survey Agencies, or other target audiences.
• Present survey-process information during webinars, virtual meetings, briefings, workshops, or in-person sessions when requested.
• Collaborate with CMS, State Survey Agencies, other contractors, technical teams, and stakeholders to refine survey design, usability, business requirements, testing approaches, and implementation strategies.
• Advise CMS on surveyor and end-user capabilities, State Survey Agency business processes, nursing-home facility operations, and practical implementation considerations.
• Monitor new CMS priorities, Federal regulatory changes, policy developments, user feedback, and analytical findings that may require modifications to the nursing-home survey process.
• Maintain organized documentation supporting recommendations, requirements, testing decisions, analytical conclusions, and CMS-approved process changes.
• Protect CMS information, including personally identifiable information, controlled information, and other sensitive data, in accordance with Government security, privacy, access-control, and records-management requirements.
• Produce electronic documents, presentations, analytical outputs, and other deliverables in accordance with applicable Section 508 accessibility requirements.
• Disclose promptly any actual, potential, or perceived organizational or personal conflicts that could affect independent performance of CMS survey-process work.