Home Health & Hospice Week

Test P4P program slated to start Jan. 1.

Home health agencies in seven states will have a chance at some extra cash if they sign up for the pay for performance demonstration project.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has selected the states from four regions: Northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts), South (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee), Midwest (Illinois) and West (California).

CMS will solicit agencies to participate voluntarily, the agency says in a release. CMS and its P4P contractor, Abt Associates, will calculate reward pools and rankings separately by region, Abt's Henry Goldberg explained in an Oct. 9 session at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice's annual meeting in Denver.

CMS and Abt will use seven existing outcome-based quality improvement (OBQI) measures in the demo: Acute Care Hospitalization; Emergent Care; and Improvement in Bathing, Ambulation/Locomotion, Transferring, Status of Surgical Wounds and Management of Oral Medications.

The demo won't punish agencies financially for participating, but may reward them if the Medicare program overall realizes savings from the demo patients. More information will be available at www.hhp4p.info, Goldberg instructed.

The project will run for two years starting Jan. 1. But just signing up for the demo doesn't mean you'll actively participate--CMS will sort volunteer agencies into a control group not affected by P4P and a "treatment" group eligible for P4P rewards, Goldberg explained at the meeting.

Note: For more P4P demonstration information and analysis, see a future issue of Eli's Home Care Week.