PBJ Reporting Moving to iQIES System
Our Take: CMS is retiring “QIES,” its first PBJ submission system. Starting August 17, 2026, all staffing data submission and reporting will occur in the more modern iQIES system. QIES…
The specific errors OIG flagged, hours reported without a matching payroll record, missed meal-break deductions, training time coded as resident care, are the exact patterns CMS’s PBJ auditor screens for. If CMS follows OIG’s recommendation to publish audit trends, expect more targeted audits built around these same error types.
On the basis of our sample results, we estimated for our sampling frame that for March 2024 nursing homes reported approximately 938,000 hours (5 percent) for approximately 53,000 RNs (42 percent) in the PBJ that were not supported in accordance with Federal requirements. As a result of this and our finding related to the 336 hours that could not be verified, CMS and other stakeholders may not have the most accurate data for their use.
— U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, June 18, 2026
United States, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. “CMS’s Processes Were Not Effective in Ensuring the Accuracy of Staffing Information Reported in the Payroll-Based Journal.” Report No. A-09-24-02005, 18 June 2026, oig.hhs.gov/documents/audit/11717/A-09-24-02005.pdf.
OIG Finds Errors in PBJ Reporting
An audit from the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), in a report released June 18, 2026, found that payroll-based journal (PBJ) reporting by nursing homes is not always accurate, with nearly half of all sample items reviewed not supported in accordance with federal requirements. Inaccuracies were due to a number of issues, including reporting hours that were not worked; not reporting hours that were worked and paid for; reporting hours that were not paid; reporting hours that were unreportable including meal breaks, training, and other hours when staff were not available to perform their primary role, and off-site hours; and reporting hours for which the nurses working were not properly licensed.
— LeadingAge, June 25, 2026
New OIG Report Highlights Important PBJ Data Errors
While the report only identified reported issues which were not supported by Federal requirements in about 5% of the submissions, the numbers that make up the 5% are pretty big – more than 900,000 hours for approximately 3000 RNs. The error trends are worth discussing further – could these be a problem in your facility’s reporting that you’re unaware of?
— CMS Compliance Group, June 22, 2026
CMS should use errors in staffing data, tougher audits to help providers improve accuracy: OIG
The 45 unsupported data points added up to just 748.5 hours reported. Another two nursing homes’ hours could not be verified because they did not provide supporting documentation. Combined, total unsupported hours equaled 1,084.5 out of 17,700 total RN hours clocked in the audit period. The OIG extrapolated that to a 5% error rate among 938,000 hours reported for approximately 53,000 RNs across the US in the same March 2024 timeframe.
— McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, June 18, 2026
