Home Health & Hospice Week

Rural add-on extension officially hits the books.

Don’t neglect Expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing, just because it isn’t as urgent as other pressing matters.

VBP has “taken a back seat to OASIS-E, which of course is a more ‘now’ issue,” notes M. Aaron Little with FORVIS.

“It’s just too early in the year” for much VBP action, judges consultant Pam Warmack with Clinic Connections. “Everyone is still reeling from the holiday crunch and trying to settle back into the work world,” Warmack observes.

But the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is trying to keep VBP top of mind with two imminent issuances for the program.

On Jan. 19, CMS will host a live-streamed “quick guide” about the program as its first performance year kicks off, a CMS official said in the Jan. 11 Home Health Open Door forum. “The HHVBP Technical Assistance (TA) Team will present a high-level leadership briefing on the expanded HHVBP Model and discuss a strategic review and planning process that HHAs can use for the first performance year,” CMS expands on its Expanded HH VBP webpage.

“The event will follow an SBAR (situation, background, assessment, and recommendation) format,” CMS notes on the registration page. The webinar “will include 20 minutes of content presentation and 10 minutes for audience Q&A,” CMS adds at https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LkWh-sR_SJ-UXSM_aFPusg.

And on Jan. 26, CMS plans to issue agencies' second Pre-Implementation Performance Report PIPR reports.

Other issues addressed in the forum include:

• Rural add-on. CMS has updated CR 12957 to reflect the one-year extension of the rural add-on for the least populated counties, as enacted in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 on Dec. 29 (see HHHW, Vol. XXXII, No. 1). A link to the CR is in the likewise-updated MLN Matters article at www.cms.gov/files/document/mm12957-home-health-prospective-payment-system-cy-2023-update.pdf.
• Public health emergency extension. Following the latest extension of the PHE (see related story, p. 23), watch for CMS guidance about PHE-affected policies, a CMS source said in response to a question on the call.
• Compare updates. CMS will update its Care Compare site for HHAs on Jan. 18 and for hospices on Feb. 23, a CMS source said in the forum. The hospice refresh will include an update to Public Use File data, she noted.

Preview and star rating reports for the next home health refresh in April are also now in HHAs’ iQIES folders, CMS says in a message to providers. OASIS-based measures “will be based on the standard number of quarters,” CMS reminds providers. “Due to the COVID-19 reporting exceptions, the claims-based measures have been calculated excluding Q1 and Q2 2020 data from measure calculations,” the agency explains.

• CAHPS. Vendors hoping to submit CAHPS patient satisfaction data for HHAs must attend self-paced training scheduled to be posted to the CAHPS webpage on Jan. 23, a CMS staffer noted. An evaluation then must be completed by Feb. 15. Current CAHPS vendors can perform their training starting Jan. 31, she added. More details are at https://homehealthcahps.org.