Experts express misgivings about proposed measures. Some of the new home health quality measures the National Quality Forum proposes could place a whole new workload on your shoulders - and some are just plain misleading, experts argue.
Here are some of the top measures experts find problems with:
The burden of this item depends entirely on how it is implemented, predicts Bob Wardwell with the Visiting Nurse Associations of America. If the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services takes a flexible approach, a normal HHA comprehensive assessment could be viewed as taking these nine areas into account.
But a more rigid approach could force agencies to fill out reams of added paperwork on each of these nine areas, worries Brian Ellsworth with the Connecticut Association for Home Care. Without more details, there's no way to know which path CMS will take.
OBQM measures "are indicators of a potential problem, not reflection of an actual problem," Wardwell stresses. "But once you publish it and give someone a score," agencies will be judged on factors out of their control or that are irrelevant, he says.
Many questions remain on other measures NQF proposes, largely because few details have been nailed down on them, Wardwell says. For example, guidelines on which measures apply to whom, because some of the measures address hospice care, are necessary for full evaluation.