Eli's Hospice Insider

Plus: Have you checked your directory information yet?

You can kick off 2017 with new information that will help you boost your quality of care.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will issue Hospice Quality Reporting Program reports in December, an agency official said in the Nov. 16 Open Door Forum for home care and hospice providers. And CMS will release Public Use Files on http://data.medicare.gov this month as well.

Hospices will be able to access their QRP reports in the QIES system in mid to late December, the CMS staffer said.

The PUFs will include national averages for seven National Quality Forum-endorsed quality measures, the source added.

Other hospice issues raised in the forum include:

Directory information updates. CMS has updated its Regional Office and state coordinator contact list, which is where you need to report changes to your incorrect or outdated directory information.

Reminder: CMS launched its hospice public reporting initiative by posting a directory that includes all Medicare-certified hospices’ names, addresses, ownership types, CMS Certification Numbers (CCNs), profit statuses, and dates of original CMS certification at https://data.medicare.gov.

You can access the updated RO and coordinator contact list on that site by clicking on the small “Explore All Datasets” box at the bottom of the home page, then choosing “Hospice Data Directory” from the menu on the left, and finally choosing “Hospice CASPER/ASPEN Contacts” from the menu on the right.

PEPPER Reports. Hospices are doing better than home health agencies at accessing their PEPPER reports, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. About 56 percent of Medicare hospices have accessed their PEPPER reports versus 24 percent of HHAs.

Those stats may reflect the fact that hospices have had more time to get used to the reports. Hospice PEPPER reports, which cover 10 risk areas, launched in 2012. In contrast, HHA PEPPER reports began only last year, said a CMS PEPPER report contractor in the forum.

Resource: See how many of your peers are accessing their PEPPER reports by state at pepperresources.org/Training-Resources/Hospices/PEPPER-Portal-Retrieval-Map.