Home Health & Hospice Week

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Stay current on developments in Medicare's plan to standardize post-acute assessments--or your business could suffer.

Here are key dates in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' plans for its Post Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC-PRD):

• Immediately. CMS is currently in the process of selecting demonstration participants. CMS will select the first of 10 market areas participating in the PAC payment reform demonstration.

Here's how: If you think the demonstration may be a good fit for you, send a request to participate to pat-comments@rti.org.

• January 2008. Data collection in the first 10 markets is set to begin this month and will continue for three years.

• March 2008. CMS will expand the demonstration to nine other markets.

Participants will collect data using the Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE) tool, submitting the data directly to CMS through Webbased data submission systems.

• Late 2011. CMS will report to Congress regarding the demonstration's findings.

Benefit: The data submission systems used with the CARE tool are designed to be interoperable so that, ultimately, data can be downloaded from provider systems, says CMS: "This will reduce data entry time and improve reliability for items already stored in a provider system, such as beneficiary insurance information, and other items that are important for improving continuity of care, such as known allergies or prescription medications at discharge."

Note: For more information, contact RTI's Barbara Gage at 1-781-434-1717 or bgage@rti.org.