Home Health & Hospice Week

January IPRs are finally out.

Home health agencies that thought they’d see the January Interim Performance Reports in, well, January have had to cool their heels.

But now, “the January Preliminary Interim Performance Reports (IPRs) for the expanded HHVBP Model have been published on the Internet Quality Improvement Evaluation System (iQIES),” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in a Feb. 8 email to providers.

Reminder: “The quarterly IPRs provide HHAs with the cohort assignment, performance year measure data for the 12 most recent months, and interim Total Performance Score (TPS),” CMS explains. “Using the IPR, an HHA can assess and track their performance relative to peers in their respective cohort throughout the expanded Model performance year.”

This preliminary IPR “provides an HHA with an opportunity to submit a recalculation request for applicable measures and interim performance scores if the agency believes there is evidence of a discrepancy in the calculation,” CMS points out. “Please note, the recalculation request does not apply to errors in data submission.”

Deadline: HHAs only have until Feb. 23 to submit a recalculation request. Details on how to do so are at www.cms.gov/priorities/innovation/media/document/hhvbp-exp-ipr-recalc-instrux.

Meanwhile, it’s not quite time to forget about the October IPRs. “The HHVBP file issues identified in the GovDelivery message distributed on January 31st, 2024 have been resolved. The October 2023 Final IPRs have been redistributed into the HHA Provider Preview Report Folder in iQIES,” CMS reports.