Eli's Hospice Insider

Hospices will get at least some chance to weigh in on the new hospice Special Focus Program and potential health equity quality measures.

Medicare contractor Abt Associates recently recruited “a wide range of hospice, home health, and health equity stakeholders — for example, providers, patient advocates, quality improvement, and health equity experts — to participate in a Technical Expert Panel (TEP) to provide input on a proposed health equity structural composite measure for both hospice and home health care settings,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in a recent announcement.

And Abt also solicited members for the TEP on the forthcoming hospice Special Focus Program, which will target hospices for extra scrutiny. The TEP will “provide input on the SFP algorithm that will be used to identify hospices that have substantially failed to meet applicable Medicare requirements based on identified criteria and measures.” And it will “develop public reporting requirements for the SFP (e.g., candidate list, SFP program participants, graduates, termination, etc.) and to recommend methods to communicate this information in a manner that is prominent, easily accessible, readily understandable, and searchable for the general public,” CMS says in a document about the panel.

Nominations for the TEPs closed on Aug. 12.