Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Don’t miss new VBP educational materials in the rush.

Home health agencies are waiting on pins and needles to see if Medicare follows through on its proposal to change the Value-Based Purchasing base year from 2019 to 2022, or drops the idea, as so many agencies begged for in their proposed rule comment letters.

HHAs worried that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will do the former may see a bad omen in the latest round of VBP questions and answers.

An updated question about the Model base year, Q4003.2, says “if CMS finalizes the change to the Model baseline year, from CY 2019 to CY 2022, as cited in the CY 2023 HH PPS proposed rule, CMS will change the achievement thresholds and benchmarks to reflect CY 2022 data. These achievement thresholds and benchmarks will be available in Summer 2023.”

CMS adds the language to one other question in the August FAQs as well, Q4004.1 about benchmarks, and adds similar language to Q4007.1 regarding agencies certified after 2019.

Resource: See the 47-page August update to the FAQs, which includes one new FAQ and five updated FAQs, at https://innovation.cms.gov/media/document/hhvbp-exp-faqs.

Meanwhile, HHAs can build their VBP knowledge with three new on-demand videos.

No. 1: The 15-minute How Measure Performance Becomes Care Points illustrates “how performance on a quality measure becomes achievement points, improvement points, and care points,” CMS explains in a message to providers.

No. 2: The 16-minute How Care Points Become the Total Performance Score (TPS) and its accompanying written materials provide “an overview of the use of care points in the TPS calculation,” CMS says.

No. 3: The 12-minute How the Total Performance Score (TPS) Becomes the Final Payment Adjustment and its accompanying written materials present “an overview of how the TPS informs the calculation of the payment adjustment,” CMS concludes. It “includes a review of Model concepts such as the Linear Exchange Function (LEF) and adjusted payment percentage (APP),” the agency adds.

CMS had promised these videos were coming back in June (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXXI, No. 24).

Keep in mind: “The content of these resources is for informational purposes only,” CMS reassures. “HHAs will not need to conduct these calculations themselves under the expanded HHVBP Model.”

Resource: Agencies can access these new tools, as well as a host of other educational materials, on the HHVBP webpage at https://innovation.cms.gov/innovation-models/expanded-home-health-value-based-purchasing-model — scroll down to the “Total Performance Score & Payment Adjustment” section for these videos.

And keep an eye out for a “repeat event” of CMS’s Aug. 25 webinar, “Navigating Performance Feedback Reports:

Interim Performance Report (IPR) and Annual Performance Report (APR),” later this fall. “Registration will be available soon,” CMS pledges in a message to providers.