Eli's Hospice Insider

But you can get some clues now.

Hospices have less than half a year to prepare for data collection on a new quality measure included in the 2017 final rule for payment, but they still don’t have many details on exactly how they’ll go about that.

In a Hospice Item Set question-and-answer document posted last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fields a question about the new measures.

Question: “When will there be an outline of the two new measures (Hospice Visits When Death is Imminent Measure Pair and Hospice and Palliative Care Composite Process Measure — Comprehensive Assessment at Admission) be posted?”

Answer: CMS doesn’t pin down a deadline, but does refer hospices to “draft details of the two proposed measures” available in:

• the HQRP Specifications for the Hospice Item Set-based Quality Measures document, available on the “Current Measures” portion of the CMS HQRP
• website at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/Hospice-Quality-Reporting/Current-Measures.html; and
• CMS’s request for approval to the Office of Management and Budget for the Hospice Item Set version 2.00.0 under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) process at www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/PaperworkReductio­nActof1995/PRA-Listing-Items/CMS-R-245.html.

Reminder: CMS finalized the measure in the final rule published in the Aug. 5 Federal Register, over industry protest that the visit measure does not necessarily show quality (see Eli’s Hospice Insider, Vol. 9, No. 9).

Heed CMS’s HIS Coding Tip

In the Q&A document, CMS also offers hospices some HIS advice.

“For treatment and medication items on the HIS (Items J2040, NO500, NO510, NO520), complete the item based on treatments for which the hospice has received orders,” CMS says in a “HIS coding tip of the quarter” included with the Q&As. “Do not include a continued treatment unless the hospice received a new order to continue the treatment. Once an order is received by the hospice to continue a treatment, use the date the hospice received the order for the ‘date initiated’ items.”

Note: A link to the quarterly Q&As is at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/Hospice-Quality-Reporting/Hospice-Item-Set-HIS.html.