Home Health & Hospice Week

Watch for changes to how Medicare will share its publicly reported information. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will launch a new Provider Data Catalog “later this summer,” it says.

Back in January — before the pandemic — CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the agency would start the new catalog in spring. “It will have an improved interface and intuitive search features to allow users to easily search and download CMS’ publicly reported data, better serving stakeholders who use the interactive and downloadable datasets like those currently found on data.Medicare.gov,” Seema said in a CMS blog post at www.cms.gov/blog/making-it-easier-compare-providers-and-care-settings-medicaregov.

At the same time, CMS announced plans to launch “Medicare Care Compare,” combining the websites for eight existing Compare tools, including Home Health Compare and Hospice Compare. Medicare Compare will allow users “to access the same information through a single point of entry and simplified navigation to find the information that is currently divided” in the eight separate Compare sites, Verma said.

CMS has not offered an update to the delayed Medicare Compare spring launch date.