Home Health & Hospice Week

Drug review, discharge to community measures also in the works.

Medicare is moving forward with new IMPACT Act measures for home health and other post-acute care settings.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is seeking input on a variety of IMPACT Act cross-setting measures for post-acute care, CMS says on its website. The agency and its quality measure contractor aim “to develop an approach for defining potentially preventable readmissions (PPRs) [to hospitals] for post- acute care (SNF, IRF, LTCH, HHA)” and “to develop potentially preventable readmissions measures for multiple settings (SNF, IRF, LTCH, HHA), including standardized items and specifications such as inclusion/exclusion criteria, and patient and facility characteristics — factors associated with outcome measures (risk adjusters),” it says.

Other proposed quality measures for home health agencies include discharge to community and medication reconciliation/drug regimen review.

New OASIS items: As part of the drug review measure, CMS is looking at adding related data elements to OASIS and other post-acute provider assessment tools, the agency says.

The call for comments follows CMS’s notice in the 2016 HH PPS final rule that it would propose “in future rulemaking” the measures for 2017 implementation. “We will take all comments into consideration when developing and modifying assessment items and quality measures,” CMS pledged in the PPS rule.

The final rule also lists “resource use, including total estimated Medicare spending per beneficiary” for possible 2017 implementation. But the agency has yet to issue materials or call for comments on that measure.

CMS is still accepting the informal comments for the preventable readmission measure until Nov. 16 and discharge to community measure until Nov. 23. “The public comment period provides an opportunity for the widest array of interested parties to provide input on the measures under development and can provide critical suggestions not previously considered by the measure contractor or its technical expert panel (TEP),” the agency notes on its web site. Materials and instructions for commenting are online at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/CallforPublicComment.html.