Home Health, Hospice & DME Open Door Forums Update

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Special Open Door Forum:

Adding Star Ratings to the Home Health Compare Website

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

1:30pm – 3:00pm Eastern Time

Conference Call Only

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) will host a Special Open Door Forum (SODF) call to allow consumers, home health agencies (HHAs), and other interested parties to give input and feedback on the planned addition of star ratings to Medicare.gov’s Home Health Compare (HHC) web site.

CMS is committed to making it easier for consumers to seek and utilize the best care for themselves and their loved ones, and meeting the information needs of health care consumers is the primary aim of CMS’ Compare websites.  

Consumer research shows that summary quality measures and the use of symbols, such as stars to represent them, helps consumers to more quickly identify differences in quality and make use of the information when selecting a health care provider. Current plans are to begin with a single star rating summarizing HHAs’ performance across a 10-measure subset of the process, outcome, and utilization quality measures that are already displayed on HHC. The individual measures will continue to be reported, but the star rating is intended to make the information more readily accessible to the widest range of consumers.  

A summary of the proposed Home Health Compare star rating methodology has been posted on the following website: http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2014-Fact-sheets-items/2014-12-11-2.html and a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) document will be posted on ‘http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQISpotlight.html.”

After a brief presentation on the proposed design of the star ratings and plans for implementation, we will open the phones to comments. Additional comments about the star ratings can be submitted by email after the call to the following address: HHC_Star_Ratings_Helpdesk@cms.hhs.gov.

Special Open Door Forum Participation Instructions:

Participant Dial-In Number: 1-800-837-1935

Conference ID #: 31480515

Note: TTY Communications Relay Services are available for the Hearing Impaired. For TTY services dial 7-1-1 or 1-800-855-2880. A Relay Communications Assistant will help.

A transcript and audio recording of this Special ODF will be posted to the Special Open Door Forum website at http://www.cms.gov/OpenDoorForums/05_ODF_SpecialODF.asp for downloading.

For automatic emails of Open Door Forum schedule updates (E-Mailing list subscriptions) and to view Frequently Asked Questions please visit our website at http://www.cms.gov/opendoorforums/.

Thank you for your interest in CMS Open Door Forums.