Patient Satisfaction:
If You Haven't Started CAHPS, Expect Pay Reductions In A Year
Published on Tue Oct 12, 2010
CMS sticks to its CAHPS deadline. Home health agencies hoping for a delay to the CAHPS patient satisfaction survey requirement were disappointed with the home health prospective payment system final rule. That's because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services nixed HHAs' requests to delay the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems requirement, according to the PPS final rule scheduled for publication in the Nov. 17 Federal Register. Hefty penalty: Under the CAHPS provision, HHAs will see a 2 percent pay cut in 2012 if they fail to start submitting CAHPS data for this quarter (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIX, No. 26, p. 204). "We are not delaying the HHCAHPS requirement," CMS says in the rule. "Our data, as of mid-October 2010, show that nearly 8,000 Medicare-certified HHAs have either applied for an exemption from participation in HHCAHPS or registered for credentialing to begin HHCAHPS." CMS already put off [...]