Home Health & Hospice Week

Hospices score lower on one measure.

Potential patients, referral sources, and competitors, among others, can now peruse your quality data on Medicare’s Hospice Compare website.

The site went live Aug. 16 and contains data from nearly 3,900 hospices on seven National Quality Forum-endorsed Hospice Item Set quality measures, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in a fact sheet about the site (see measures, this page).

Stats: The measure with the lowest national average rate is Pain Assessment. The measure, which gauges “percentage of patient stays during which the patient screened positive for pain and received a comprehensive assessment of pain within 1 day of the screening,” came in at 76.3 percent.

The remaining six measures scored in the mid to high 90s, with the highest being Treatment Preferences at 98.4 percent.

Why the big difference for the pain measure? “One of the key issues would be not having the assessment completed in the time frame specified,” suspects Theresa Forster with the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. “Hospices only have one day from having a patient screen positive for pain to complete the assessment and have it count.”

Watch out: Whether the national rates will be as high for the CAHPS-based measures that will debut this winter is open to question.

Even though six of the seven measures have average rates in the 90s, the comparison still has value, CMS maintains in its fact sheet. “Even when measure scores may average over 90 percent, there is often a wide range of provider performance representing room for improvement,” the agency says.

Plus: CMS also plans to implement a fivestar rating system, as it does for home health agencies and other provider types, soon, it said in the 2017 payment rule.

“The Hospice Compare site allows patients, family members, caregivers, and healthcare providers to compare hospice providers based on important quality metrics,” CMS says in a release.

“The Hospice Compare website is an important tool for the American people and will help empower them in a time of vulnerability as they look for information necessary to make important decisions about hospice care for loved ones,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma says in the release. “The CMS Hospice Compare website is a reliable resource for family members and care givers who are looking for facilities that will provide quality care.”

NAHC praises the site’s launch. “While the initial launch includes only a limited set of process measures, it represents an important step forward in the evolution of the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP), and sets the hospice program firmly on the road toward greater transparency — on-par with other Medicare providers,” Forster says. “We anticipate significant changes going forward.”

Note: The new site is at www.medicare.gov/hospicecompare.