Home Health & Hospice Week

Prepare for care transition focus.

The long-awaited final rule on Home Health Conditions of Participation contains a multitude of changes, from big to small.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid

Services has added new Conditions on patient rights and infection control, it says in the rule released Jan. 9. The patient rights standard “clearly enumerates the rights of home health agency patients and the steps that must be taken to assure those rights,” CMS says in a release about the rule. The infection control requirement “focuses on the use of standard infection control practices, and patient/caregiver education and teaching,” CMS adds.

The agency also lists other CoP changes in its release:

• An expanded comprehensive patient assessment requirement.
• A requirement for patients and caregivers to have written information about upcoming visits, medication instructions, treatments administered, instructions for care that the patient and caregivers perform, and the name and contact information of a home health agency clinical manager.
• A requirement for an integrated communication system that ensures that patient needs are identified and addressed, care is coordinated among all disciplines, and that there is active communication between the HHA and the patient’s physician(s).
• A requirement for a data-driven, agencywide quality assessment and performance improvement (QAPI) program that continually evaluates and improves agency care for all patients at all times.
• A new infection prevention and control requirement with standard infection control practices, and patient/caregiver education and teaching.
• A streamlined skilled professional services requirement that focuses on appropriate patient care activities and supervision across all disciplines.
• An expanded patient care coordination requirement that makes a licensed clinician responsible for all patient care services, such as coordinating referrals and assuring that plans of care meet each patient’s needs at all times.
• Revisions to simplify the organizational structure of HHAs while continuing to allow parent agencies and their branches.
• New personnel qualifications for HHA administrators and clinical managers.

Tool: For more specifics, see select revisions drawn from a list in the final rule, next page. For complete list, email the editor at rebeccaj@eliresearch.com with “CoPs list” in the subject line.