Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Tap multiple new quality improvement resources.

Make time in your schedule to stay up to date on the latest Expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing resources.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued its most recent Frequently Asked Question set for March. While the FAQ set includes no new questions this month, it does contain a number of updated answers.

For example: “Does discharge to a non-institutional hospice negatively impact the OASIS-based Discharged to Community measure?” a home health agency asks in Q3022.1.

Answer: “The OASIS-based Discharged to Community quality measure reports the percentage of home health quality episodes after which patients remained in the community. Quality episodes in which patients are transferred or discharged to hospice, patients who die, and patients whose discharge disposition is unknown, are excluded from the Discharged to Community measure,” CMS explains.

The agency further elaborates that Discharged to Community measure exclusions apply to quality measures that end in a:

• Transfer to an inpatient hospice (M0100 Reason for assessment - RFA 6 or 7 Transferred, and M2410 Inpatient Facility response is 4 hospice) and with a M0906 Discharge/Transfer/Death Date of 1/1/2023 or later, or
• Discharge to a non-institutional/home hospice (M0100 Reason for assessment - RFA 9 Discharge from Agency, and M2420 Discharge Disposition response is 3 non-institutional hospice), and with a M0906 Discharge/Transfer/Death Date of 1/1/2023 or later, or
• Death at home (M0100 Reason for assessment - RFA 8 Death at Home), or
• Discharge from agency (M0100 Reason for assessment - RFA 9 Discharge from Agency) for which the patient’s discharge disposition is unknown (M2420 Discharge Disposition response is unknown “UK”).

Take In These Videos

In addition to perusing the 65-page FAQ set, you can check out new instructional videos.

“Two (2) new 20-minute on-demand recordings are available for HHAs to use as they consider clinical strategies and refine their quality improvement efforts to improve performance in the expanded HHVBP Model measures,” CMS says in a message to providers. The “Essentials Module” titles include “Patient and Family/Caregiver Engagement: Assessment and Goal Setting” and “Care Transitions: Provider Communication.”

Recordings and slides for the videos are at https://innovation.cms.gov/innovation-models/expanded-home-health-value-based-purchasing-model under the “Quality Improvement” section.

And if you missed the March 30 webinar “Strategies for Success Self-Assessment Tool,” you can access links to the webinar recording, slides, and 12-page write-up under the QI section as well.