Home Health & Hospice Week

Home care providers' Medicare reimbursement will directly depend on the quality of the services they provide if the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission gets its way. MedPAC makes a strong call for a payment-quality nexus in the Medicare program in its June 3 report to Congress. "Medicare's beneficiaries and the nation's taxpayers cannot afford for the Medicare payment system to remain neutral toward quality," the influential advisory panel says. MedPAC recommends providers be paid differently based on quality and that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services "implement other payment structures to promote [quality] across settings, where some of the most important quality problems occur." If the commission does succeed in pushing the measure, home health agencies probably would be low on the implementation list. Medi-care+Choice plans and inpatient rehabilitation facilities should be first in line for payment differentials, since data and quality measures are relatively readily available, the report says. CMS also should take aggressive action in the hospital and physician sectors, since that's where most care is provided, the report says. But home care quality information is easily available through OASIS, the report notes. That could make agencies more susceptible for quality-related changes to payment. "Home health agencies may be appropriate candidates for financial incentives," MedPAC says. The commission praises CMS for implementing the home health quality initiative for HHAs earlier this year. The General Accounting Office gave former HHS Office of Inspector General chief Janet Rehnquist a farewell kick in the pants June 11, publishing a scathing account of her oversight of the agency. The GAO criticizes Rehnquist for "serious lapses in judgment" and drastic personnel shifts that "fostered an atmosphere of anxiety and distrust" (GAO-03-685). The 50-page reports chronicles numerous high-profile "lapses in judgment" - from her purported delay of a Florida pension audit during Gov. Jeb Bush's gubernatorial run to her brief possession of a firearm at OIG headquarters. Rehnquist left the OIG June 1. HHAs have a new online tool for information from CMS, the "Home Health Information Resource for Medicare" at www.cms.hhs. gov/providers/hha/. "There are many features on the page including an alphabetical listing of topics, an OASIS section, listserv access and a highlight section to emphasize current home health activities," CMS says. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has posted substantially revised accreditation standards for home care organizations. They will go into effect Jan. 1. "The new standards are the result of nearly two years of work to substantially consolidate JCAHO requirements to reduce the paperwork and documentation burden of the accreditation process and increase its focus on patient safety and health care quality," the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based accrediting body says in a release. The new standards, part of JCAHO's Shared [...]