Use the delay to prepare for scrutiny. After several tentative dates and cancellations, it now looks as if the national launch of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Home Health Compare Web site will take place in early November, and you should know by now if you'll feel like celebrating. CMS plans to hold a press conference about the measure the same day the Home Health Compare Web site will go live. The Web site will contain agency-specific outcome data for each Medicare-certified home health agency, reflecting care provided between June 2002 and May 2003 (see OASIS Alert, Vol. 4, No. 10, p. 96). The exact launch date will depend on the schedules of both CMS Administrator Tom Scully and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who plan to be involved in the intense but brief publicity surrounding the home health quality initiative rollout. CMS plans to accompany the launch with advertisements in newspapers in each state, a CMS spokesperson confirmed in the Oct. 7 Open Door Forum for home health. The ads will contain selected outcomes, a brief explanation of home care and where to find the Home Health Compare Web site. In states with a large number of agencies, HHAs will be selected to appear in the ads based on a ranking by the number of unduplicated admissions for agencies within the state, the spokesperson explained. Then those agencies will be presented alphabetically. The ads will focus on three outcome measures: improvement in bathing, improvement in ambulation and improvement in taking oral medications. These are the same outcomes highlighted in the Phase I pilot project of HHQI, which began last May. All 11 outcomes will be on the Web site for public comparison (see OASIS Alert, Vol. 4, No. 10, p. 97). The 11 measures used in the quality comparison should remain the same for the next year, the spokesperson told forum listeners, but may change after that. After Jan.1, 2004, the National Quality Forum will evaluate the measure to see if they are the best ones to use. In response to industry concerns, CMS presented a two-and-a-half-hour HHQI satellite and Web broadcast Oct. 3 and a special half-hour segment in the Oct.7 forum. CMS emphasized key points HHAs should keep in mind when preparing for the HHQI launch:
If your coordinator is reluctant to correct the record between surveys, refer her to CMS' Sept. 11 memo (S&C- 03-33) instructing state survey agencies to do this, recommended a CMS official during the Oct. 7 forum. Agencies with less than six months of data will be on the site, but the numbers will show up only when six months of data is available. CMS will include a statement explaining the shorter time period. Also, CMS will cite outcome results of "under 5 percent" or "over 95 percent" with those phrases, rather than with specific numbers, to protect patient privacy. Editor's Note: Consumers and referral sources will be able to view Home Health Compare at www.medicare.gov/HHCompare/home.asp. To see the archived HHQI broadcast on the Web, go to http://cms.internetstreaming.com. More details on the quality initiative are at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hhqi/default.asp. The Sept. 11 memo is at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hhqi/Correction Policy.pdf.