Advanced Search

Home Health & Hospice Week

Quality:

Prepare For Resumption Of Public Reporting In New Year

Published on Thu Nov 18, 2021

claims-based measures will stay frozen at least another six months.

It may seem like not long ago that Medicare froze public reporting of quality measures, but it’s now time to start up again — for some measures.

Recap: In March 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it would not report any quality data from the first two quarters of 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19. The last time CMS updated the Medicare Compare site was in October 2020 (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXIX, No. 41).

Now CMS is set to update home health agencies’ Compare data in January and hospices’ Compare data in February, officials confirmed at the agency’s Nov. 10 Open Door Forum for HHAs and hospices.

Home Health

The January refresh of OASIS-based measures will be based on three quarters of data due to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency for Hospice Item Set-based measures, a CMS staffer reminded attendees. For CAHPS measures, it will rely on the most recent six quarters of data. (CMS outlined exactly how its modified public reporting will work for both HHAs and hospices in the hospice rulemaking cycle this year.)

However, claims-based measures won’t see the same update, the CMS source explained in the forum. “The claims-based quality measures … have not been updated, as CMS has decided to continue with the data freeze for claims-based measures for an additional six months,” the agency says on its Home Health Quality Reporting Program webpage. “This decision will allow CMS more time to analyze the calculation of these measures, given the required comprehensive exclusion of claims data that occurred during Q1 2020 and Q2 2020, and the effect of that missing data on such aspects of measure calculation as lookback periods, and risk adjustment.”

Timeline: “We are targeting the July 2022 refresh of Care Compare for the resumption of HH claims-based measure updates on Care Compare,” CMS says.

CMS will update star ratings with new data, however, the CMS officials said in the forum.

HHAs should already have their preview reports for quality measures and star ratings in their iQIES folders, CMS says. The reports were originally scheduled to go out in early November, but got delayed until mid-November due to a technical problem, the CMS staffer relayed. All HHAs should have their reports now, she added in response to an HHA question.

Plus: In the 2022 home health final rule published in the Nov. 9 Federal Register, CMS finalized its plan “to publicly report the Percent of Residents Experiencing One or More Major Falls with Injury measure … beginning in April 2022” for HHAs, according to the regulation. The agency plans to implement that change, the CMS source confirmed.

Hospice

CMS is set to update hospices’ quality data in a February 2022 update of Medicare Compare. But the agency won’t start reporting the claims-based Hospice Visits in Last Days of Life and Hospice Care Index Measures until the May 2022 refresh, CMS indicated in the hospice final rule this year. They will be based on the most recent six quarters of data.

CMS has placed preview reports for the February refresh in hospices’ CASPER folders, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice notes in its member newsletter.

And in August 2022, CMS plans to begin publicly reporting star ratings for hospice CAHPS measures, a CMS staffer added. In a “dry run” period, hospices can see their star ratings in the preview reports for both the February and May refreshes, she said, even though the CAHPS star ratings won’t appear on the Compare site until August. That gives hospices the opportunity to become familiar with their ratings before they go public, she noted.

In response to a hospice question, another CMS official confirmed that CAHPS star ratings for hospices won’t have half stars, but will rather be rounded up or down.

Some types of star ratings bestowed by CMS include half stars and some don’t, agency reps acknowledged in the forum. HH CAHPS star ratings also don’t include half stars, another CMS staffer noted.

And “hospices will see the star rating for each of the eight CAHPS measures in the preview reports but only the summary star will appear on Care Compare,” NAHC reminds hospices.

Meanwhile: Plans to move HIS data submission to iQIES aren’t happening any time soon. CMS will provide advance notice when that transition is ready, but that won’t be in 2022, a CMS official confirmed in the forum. v

Note: The CMS home health public reporting tip sheet under COVID is at www.cms.gov/files/document/hhqrp-pr-tip-sheet081320final-cx-508.pdf and the hospice one is at https://www.cms.gov/files/document/hqrp-pr-tip-sheet081320final-cx-508.pdf.

Other Articles in this issue of

Home Health & Hospice Week

View All