Home Health & Hospice Week

Hospice Item Set, CAHPS broached in forum.

Fail to submit your structural and pain measure data by April 1 and you’ll be sorry.

Why? The Centers for Medicare & Med-icaid Services will dock your reimbursement rates 2 percent in 2015 if you don’t turn in your hospice quality reporting program data by the deadline, related CMS’s Robin Dowell in the March 5 Open Door Forum for home health and hospice providers.

If you are Medicare-certified and obtained a CMS Certification Number (CCN) by March 3, you need to report the data, Dowell stressed.

Remember: You’ll need to register for new accounts to submit this year’s data, Dowell said. “Last year’s user accounts are no longer valid.”

Tip: Make sure you have the correct CCN and enter it correctly too, Dowell advised. “This was an issue multiple times last year.”

Also make sure you actually submit the data you have entered. “Some providers have entered data but not submitted it yet,” she noted.

It’s time to play catch up for many hospices. “Only about half of the current hospice providers have registered and activated user accounts so far,” Dowell warned.

Next cycle: This is the last time hospices will submit data on these measures. For the next cycle, hospices will report the Hospice Item Set (HIS) data they’ll start collecting in July, Dowell reminded attendees.

Other hospice issues addressed in the forum include:

• HIS. Mark your calendars for HIS training. CMS will make HIS technical training available the first week of May on the QTSO website, Dowell said. WebEx modules will walk you through the registration and submission process. CMS also will provide a step-by-step user’s guides for the HIS registration and data submission process. Those modules will be available “indefinitely” and hospices can view them as frequently as they wish, she explained.

“CMS encourages you to schedule time the first part of May to watch the technical modules,” Dowell said in the forum.

Pointer: The May sessions will focus on the technical aspects — registration and data submission, Dowell stressed. For training on collecting the HIS data, refer back to the Feb. 4 and 5 training sessions CMS provided. Those two days are provided in their entirely on Youtube right now, a CMS source tells Eli. Access them at www.youtube.com/watch? v=Caeoezmix6M and www.youtube.com/watch?v= TClgfeVHGDQ. In the future, CMS will “provide a playlist so the different segments of the training can be accessed separately,” the source says.

Starting May 19, you’ll be able to register for the two user IDs you’ll need to submit your HIS data. “This does take time to get these two user IDs,” Dowell warned. “Therefore we strongly encourage you not to wait until the last minute to go through this process of obtaining those user IDs.”

CMS is on track to begin requiring HIS data July 1, submitted via the new ASAP system, Dowell confirmed. Don’t expect extra time to get in compliance with the new assessment tool.

• Hospice CAHPS. Get ready to add one more reporting burden to your plate. Medicare will require hospices to report CAHPS data starting next year.

Hospices will perform a CAHPS “dry run” in the first quarter of 2015, explained CMS’s Debra Dean-Whittaker in the forum. 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 said. CAHPS data reporting in 2015 will impact 2017 rates, she pointed out.