Home Health & Hospice Week

New quality measures are on the horizon — some closer and some farther away.

Closer measures: Medicare is taking steps to develop “functional outcome quality measures” in the home health setting.

The latest: Contractor Abt Associates is assembling a Technical Expert Panel to provide directions and input on potential functional measures in the home health setting, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official noted in the Jan. 8 Home Health Open Door Forum. The possible measures are change in self-care score between admission and discharge; change in mobility score between admission and discharge; the percentage of home health episodes that meet or exceed an expected discharge self-care score; and the percentage of home health episodes that meet or exceed an expected discharge mobility score, CMS says on its website.

Part of the TEP’s duties will be assessing Section GG data for the measures.

To volunteer for the panel by Jan. 17 or to see more details about the potential measures, go to www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/TEP-Currently-Accepting-Nominations.

Farther away measures: Meanwhile, the National Quality Forum is moving ahead with recommendations for one new home health QM and one new hospice QM. The comment period on the measures closed Jan. 8, but you can still see the details at www.qualityforum.org/Show_Content.aspx?id=30279.

NQF’s Measures Application Partnership conditionally supports MUC 2019-34 Home Health Within-Stay Potentially Preventable Hospitalization and MUC 2019-33 Hospice Visits in the Last Days of Life, it notes.

The latter is the first claims-based hospice measure the MAP has recommended, a CMS staffer noted in the forum. More information on the measures will be available in an NQF workgroup summary posted to its website this month, the source added.