On February 28th CMS ended the month hosting their regular Home Health Open Door Forum with some very notable updates to the home care industry. With little fanfare and during the Q&A portion, CMS responded to a question regarding the timing of the new OASIS forms as OASIS-D!

The partnership between NHIA and SHP supports the association’s longstanding Data Initiative effort created to collect and report patient outcomes data in a standardized manner and to provide the industry with the tools needed to establish national benchmarks for home infusion quality. Utilizing its web-based, automated, real-time data solution for home infusion pharmacies, SHP will work with NHIA to collect, aggregate, and report data from any eligible provider that can be used to establish future national standards for the field.

At their December 14th HH QRP webinar, CMS announced the deletion of the Influenza Immunization Received for Current Flu Season measure from the algorithm in calculating the home health Quality of Patient Care (QoPC) Star ratings. CMS made this after the month-long comment period ended in November 2017. The change will take effect in the April 2018 Home Health Compare (HHC) refresh.

The CY 2018 Home Health Payment System Rate final rule was published last week and CMS announced the news the industry was hoping to read – “We are not finalizing the implementation of the Home Health Groupings Model (HHGM) in this final rule.” Below are a few other highlights from the final rule related to the Home Health Value Based Purchasing (HHVBP) program, Home Health Quality Reporting Program (HHQRP) and the changing HH PPS case-mix weights (CMW).

Republished with permission from Decision Health. Article originally published on Home Health Line October 16, 2016. Whether they’re discussing QAPI, 5-star ratings or rehospitalization rates in general, more and more agencies are showcasing their quality of care when they market to referral sources, a new HHL survey shows.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the new Hospice Compare website in August. The data shows how important it is to track and manage your performance improvement program with real-time scores. With a 9 month delay expected in Hospice Compare data, your scores today will be part of the CMS benchmark through June 2019. Hospices should evaluate their highest and lowest performers for identifying best practices and remedial training accordingly.

The big news in the latest proposed rule for HH PPS was the Home Health Groupings Model (HHGM). Along with the typical recalibration to case-mix payments and case weights, did you see the significant proposals regarding the Home Health Quality Reporting Program (HH QRP)? Almost a third of the 389 pages in the rule were in regard to the HH QRP.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) penalizes hospitals for Medicare readmissions. Hospitals have difficulty tracking and managing patients after discharge. At Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP), we look at millions of records each year from the Home Health Agency Outcome Assessment Information Set (OASIS) to correlate the patient characteristics that led to a transfer or discharge to an acute care hospital (readmission). With CMS incentives increasingly directed at reducing readmission rates, hospitals can maximize their Medicare reimbursement by selecting a post-acute care (PAC) home health care provider that uses actionable, real-time analytics.

SHP is happy to adopt the new NHIA infusion industry standards to support the data initiative for patient outcome improvement. As a result, we will be replacing our existing proprietary home infusion patient satisfaction survey with the new survey, approved and issued by NHIA, for all our current and future customers. The adoption of the NHIA survey will allow home infusion pharmacies to compare their performance to a standardized national benchmark. This will be a great benefit to home infusion pharmacies as they work with referral sources and payers, and will aid their internal organizational efforts to improve performance.

The Home Health Groupings Model (HHGM), which is the most significant change to the home health prospective payment reimbursement model since its inception, was finally released on Thursday, July 28th as part of the Home Health Payment Proposed Rule for CY 2018, although it is not scheduled to be implemented until CY 2019.