Home Health & Hospice Week

What to do if you change Home Health Compare vendors.

If you feel like you’re spending more time reporting on what you’re doing than actually focusing on patient care, you’re not alone. Here are three crucial updates on your reporting requirements from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

1. Hospice Quality Updates: Begin Entering NQF Data Now

You might be enjoying your little breather after rushing to meet your structural measure data-entry deadline on Jan. 31, but don’t wait until the last minute to enter your National Quality Forum #0209 data, warns CMS’s Robin Dowell in a recent Open Door Forum. Although the April 1 deadline may still seem long enough down the road, it really isn’t. You should start entering your data now, if you haven’t already.

And as you’re working on entering your current data, you should also start collecting data for the 2015 payment year, Dowell stresses.

Heads up: For the 2015 payment year, you’re collecting all data from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2013 — the entire calendar year’s data in one annual submission, Dowell says.

Remember: If you fail to submit data for either the structural measure or the NQF #0209, you’ll suffer a 2-percent cut to your Annual Payment Update in 2014.

2. OASIS Web-Based Training Updates: Check Out These New Modules

The OASIS web-based training site at http://surveyortraining.cms.hhs.gov/index.aspx has added several new training modules, according to CMS’s Pat Sevast in the ODF. These modules include:

• Living Arrangements & Sensory Status Domains

o M1100 through M1242

• Integumentary Status Domain Pressure Ulcers (Part 1 & Part 2)

o M1300 through M1307

o M1308 through M1324

• Integumentary Status: Stasis Ulcers, Surgical Wounds & Skin Lesions

o M1330 through M1350

• Neuro/Emotional/Behavioral Domain

o M1700 through M1750

Sevast urged listeners to review the new trainings and the PowerPoint slides. Also, if you’re having difficulty navigating the Surveyor Training site, Sevast offered these simple steps:

1. Go to http://surveyortraining.cms.hhs.gov/index.aspx;

2. Click on "I Am A Provider;"

3. Click on "Web based Training;"

4. Scroll down this page, and click on "Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) Training;" and then

5. Click on "Launch the Course." This will bring you to the OASIS Training Course Menu page, where you’ll find all the training modules.

3. HHCAHPS Updates: How To Deal With Vendor Drama

The recent CMS ODF also yielded a few tips and updates for the Home Health Survey Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems. First, the most recent data posted to Home Health Compare is from July 2011 through June 2012.

And the HHCAHPS Coordination Team announced on Feb. 26 that HHAs should get ready for the start of the calendar year 2015 APU. HHCAHPS data collection for the CY 2015 APU requirements will begin with the sample month of April 2013.

Reminders: Additionally, keep in mind that when you change vendors, you must certify the new vendor. And you should check Home Health Compare regularly to ensure that your vendor is submitting data.

If you have data submission or vendor-related problems, contact the HHCAHPS Coordination Team at 866-354-0985 or hhcahps@rti.org.