Home Health & Hospice Week

Only one-third of VBP agencies have signed up for data reporting website.

Add one more thing to your Value-Based Purchasing to-do list if you’re in one of the nine VBP states — passing along information to your VBP software vendor.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has been stingy with access to the HH VBP Connect Web portal and the webinars and other training tools it’s offering to home health agencies in the VBP states. Despite requests, representatives from VBP vendors, agencies in non-VBP states, and others are not allowed onto the website that contains educational materials, or into the training sessions.

The result: Vendors are having a tough time getting essential questions answered. For example, one vendor rep called in to CMS’s March 9 Home Health Open Door Forum with a question about how to count contract therapists in the new VBP measure, Influenza Vaccination Coverage for Home Health Care Personnel. VBP agencies will start collecting data for the measure in July and begin reporting the data in October.

CMS included that information in a VBP webinar last month, noted CMS’s Marcie O’Reilly in the call. The caller noted that she’s a vendor, so isn’t allowed to attend the webinars.

HHAs won’t collect or report that information for contract staff, O’Reilly related (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXV, No. 11). That goes even when the entire therapy staff is contracted, O’Reilly confirmed. Contracted staff “are not captured” in the new measure, she said.

Another vendor rep, Rhonda Oakes of McKesson Corp., inquired whether there was some way for vendors to obtain the information offered in the webinars and on HH VBP Connect.

O’Reilly replied that the VBP agencies would have to share any information.

 “It seems burdensome for them to have to relay that information,” Oakes told CMS.

CMS Hopes To Increase VBP ‘Engagement’

In January, CMS reported that about 77 percent of Medicare-certified HHAs in the nine VBP states had established a primary point of contact (PPOC) for each unique CCN under the program (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXV, No. 6). That figure has gone up only slightly to about 80 percent, O’Reilly revealed in the most recent forum. “We are really trying to get that last 20 percent engaged,” she said.

CMS also reported that only about 17 percent of VBP agencies had taken the second step of establishing a User ID with the EIDM system and reporting the ID to the VBP Help Desk to “facilitate registration” for CMS’s Secure Portal. That figure has increased to about 32 percent, but is still very low, O’Reilly said in the March 9 call. Registering for the Secure Portal “is an important first step towards registration for the HH VBP Model portal where HHAs will receive performance reports and enter data for new measures,” notes the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.

Next step: The 32 percent of agencies who have established their PPOC and registered in the Secure Portal can now register multiple staff for the various portal roles such as data entry and submission confirmation, O’Reilly told listeners. Each staff member must have their own EIDM User ID and must request to be a privileged user — then they can choose their role in the system, she explained.

Be aware: If you don’t assign staff members to fill roles, then the PPOC must do all the role duties, O’Reilly emphasized.

HHAs might be lagging on participation because they don’t actually start reporting VBP data on the Portal until October. But right now, agencies can access benchmark reports on the HH VBP Connect, O’Reilly pointed out. CMS will conduct a virtual tour of the Portal site in May, she noted. The HH VBP Connect site also contains the webinars for On Demand viewing and other features, she said.

VBP agencies’ PPOCs should have received an email to gain access to the HH VBP Connect site by setting up a password, O’Reilly said. If you did not respond to that email, you can still gain access by requesting a password reset; just send an email to CMMIconnecthelpesk@cms.hhs.gov with the PPOC’s name and CCN of your agency, she directed.