Home Health & Hospice Week

Don’t miss the real-time Q&A in the Nov. 18 livestream.

One of home health agencies’ biggest criticisms of moving expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing’s baseline year to 2022 has been that agencies will be flying blind in the first part of their first performance year, if not longer. But now a new release from Medicare counters that problem.

“As the expanded HHVBP Model prepares to start the first performance year on January 1, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the November 2022 Pre-Implementation Performance Report (PIPR) to all active home health agencies,” CMS says in a message sent to providers on Nov. 8. “The PIPRs” — pronounced “pipers” — “provide HHAs with data on their quality measure performance used in the expanded HHVBP Model, with comparison to HHAs nationally within peer cohorts,” the agency explains.

“The PIPRs provide a preview of where your agency’s performance falls in regard to the new baseline year, in advance of the release of the first Interim Performance Reports (IPRs) in July 2023,” CMS continues.

Reminder: In the 2023 home health final rule released Oct. 31, CMS had indicated it would get agencies their data “as soon as administratively possible,” including “before the start of the CY 2023 performance year and again periodically before the first IPR” (see HHHW, Vol. XXXI, No. 39-40).

The PIPR “responds to requests of CMS to provide agencies with data prior to the start of the first performance year,” CMS notes in a new on-demand webinar about the report. The PIPR “allows you to see how you’re doing compared to peers nationally at this point in time,” the agency adds.

CMS had been adamant about changing the baseline year in the face of protest from many commenters. “We believe that more recent data from the CY 2022 time period is more likely to be aligned with performance years’ data under the expanded Model, and provide a more appropriate baseline for assessing HHA improvement for all measures under the Model as compared to ... the pre-PHE CY 2019 data, as previously finalized for existing HHAs,” CMS says in the rule published in the Nov. 4 Federal Register.

Look At Your ‘Invaluable’ Data

HHAs should waste no time in downloading and analyzing their reports, experts urge.

“This new information will be invaluable in advance of the release of the first Interim Performance Reports (IPRs) in July 2023,” stresses LeadingAge New York on its website.

“The PIPRs provide a preview of where your agency’s performance falls in regard to the new baseline year,” explains clinical consultant Mary Madison with Briggs Healthcare on the vendor’s blog.

Providers can get started right away, since CMS has already posted an on-demand webinar, slides, transcript, and overview document on its expanded HH VBP webpage in the “Model Reports” section.

VBP’s first performance year begins Jan. 1, “just 53 days away,” stressed a CMS official speaking at the agency’s Nov. 9 Home Health Open Door Forum.

“The goal of the PIPRs is to provide HHAs with a current snapshot of their performance compared to others in their cohort on each of the applicable measures used in the expanded HHVBP Model,” CMS explains in the on-demand webinar’s slides.

The PIPR has many benefits, CMS maintains in the slides. “The PIPR may provide new insights that will help you reach your goals,” it says. “Expanded HHVBP Model performance reports can be incorporated into established quality improvement efforts.”

The new report also “helps you to become familiar with subsequent reports, like IPRs and APRs, that will be released later in the Model,” CMS adds.

“The PIPRs provide insight to HHAs into how they are performing in relationship to other competing HHAs in their cohort,” the CMS speaker says in the on-demand webinar.

The report “provides HHAs with an indication of where they should focus quality improvement efforts to furnish better care to beneficiaries, improve their Total Performance Score (TPS), and earn a positive payment adjustment within the Model,” CMS explains.

Timeline: CMS will publish three PIPRs, it notes in the webinar — this one, and ones in January and April. “The April 2023 PIPR will be the last PIPR published,” the speaker notes.

Tune in: CMS will hold a livestreaming event, an “Introduction to the Pre-Implementation Performance Report (PIPR).” While the session will use the recording and slides that are already up on the webpage, it also will include a live Q&A session, CMS points out.

PIPRs aren’t the only VBP concept you should be getting very friendly with. “If you haven’t already done so, please review the resources we have developed to assist home health agencies with understanding the expanded model,” the CMS speaker said in the Nov. 9 forum.

Note: Links to the on-demand webinar and related materials, as well as to registration fore the livestream, are at https://innovation.cms.gov/innovation-models/expanded-home-health-value-based-purchasing-model under the “Model Reports” heading.