Home Health & Hospice Week

CAHPS requirements also addressed in Open Door Forum.

Hospices will need to get used to new cost reporting rules this fiscal year.

In its Aug. 20 Open Door Forum for home care and hospice providers, the Centers for Medi-care & Medicaid Services indicated that the hospice cost report would be out in August. CMS re-leased the document Aug. 29, the National Associa-tion for Home Care & Hospice’s Theresa Forster tells Eli.

If you looked at the draft document CMS floated last November (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No. 42), you should have a pretty good idea of what the new form is like, a CMS official said in the forum. The agency merely shaded some lines on the B worksheet and corrected a few grammatical errors in the final version, he said.

Significant changes to the cost report would have required another round of rulemaking and comments, the rep noted.

The new cost report will take effect Oct. 1, the CMS staffer said in response to a question from CPA Dave Macke at VonLehman in Ft. Mitchell, Ky. But it will only apply to freestanding hospices, the staffer clarified. Provider-based hospices, including hospital- and home health-based pro-viders, will get new cost report forms at a later unspecified date.

See the new cost report at www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Transmittals/Downloads/R1P243.pdf.

Start Your CAHPS Contracting Now

As in the home health arena, hospices are required to contract with a third party to conduct their hospice Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys and report the data to CMS. Hospices have been eagerly awaiting the approved CAHPS vendor list, and CMS now has posted it on its CAHPS website at www.hospicecahps survey.org/content/ApprovedSurvey.asp.

The list of about 30 vendors is “conditionally” approved, CMS says on the site.

Reminder: Hospices will perform a CAHPS “dry run” in the first quarter of 2015, ex-plained CMS’s Debra Dean-Whittaker in the for-um. Hospices will need to participate for at least one month in January, February or March next year. After the dry run period, continuous monthly survey administration starts April 1, 2015, Dean-Whittaker told listeners. 

CAHPS data reporting in 2015 will impact 2017 rates, Dean-Whittaker pointed out. “There are dollars on the table,” she said in the forum.

Vendor To Report Live Discharge Rate

Once you’ve selected and approved your vendor in the system, your job will be to provide that vendor with a list of patients deaths for the surveys that target caregivers and family, Dean-Whittaker explained. You’ll have to do so once in Q1, then every month starting in April.

Tip: Your list will include patients who died, not those who were discharged or revoked the benefit, Dean-Whittaker pointed out in response to a caller question.

However: You will report your number of live discharges, if not their individually identifiable data, she said. In this way, CMS will be able to easily keep tabs on your rate of live discharges.

Stay tuned for the officially approved version of the CAHPS survey, Dean-Whittaker told another caller. OMB has not yet approved the final survey, although CMS doesn’t expect major changes to the tool, she added.

You can find out more details about CAHPS requirements in the newly released Quality Assur-ance Guidelines at www.hospicecahpssurvey.org/content/QualityAssurance.aspx.