Medicare may soon measure your performance on falls, dyspnea.
In addition to polishing current quality measures for upcoming Home Health Value-Based Purchasing and star ratings, you may have some new ones to worry about soon.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services HH Quality Reporting Program contractor Abt Associates is holding a Technical Expert Panel Aug. 21, CMS says in a notice. CMS “plans to implement additional measures of home health quality addressing gaps in measurement that have been identified by stakeholders,” CMS says in the notice. “The TEP will give input on two measures under consideration; a falls risk composite process measure and an outcome measure assessing improvement in dyspnea in patients with a primary diagnosis of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Chronic Obstruc-tive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and/or Asthma.”
The TEP also will provide input on modification or retirement of existing measures, CMS adds. See the notice at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/Downloads/Home-Health-Quality-Reporting-Program-Technical-Expert-Panel.zip — choose the file in the zip file that begins “TEPCharter.”