Notices: TEP Materials for Home Health & Corrected Star Rating Preview Reports

TEP Materials for Home Health

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have contracted with RTI International and Abt Associates to develop a discharge to community measure for Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (IRFs), Long-Term Care Hospitals (LTCHs), and Home Health Agencies (HHAs), to meet the mandate of the Improving Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (known as the IMPACT Act). As part of its measure development process, CMS asks contractors to convene groups of stakeholders and experts who contribute direction and thoughtful input to the measure contractor during measure development and maintenance.

Additional details about the TEP and TEP nomination materials will be posted during the week of July 6 on the following webpage: https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/TechnicalExpertPanels.html .

Corrected Star Rating Preview Reports

Corrections to Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings Provider Preview Reports for October 2015 Home Health Compare Posting.

The second round of Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings are scheduled to be published on the Home Health Compare web site on October 8, 2015.   A set of Provider Preview Reports showing the calculation of the second round of star ratings were distributed to providers’ CASPER shared folders on June 30.  CMS has since learned that there was a transposition error in the data used to generate those reports, and they are being pulled from the CASPER folders. Providers who have already downloaded and circulated these reports are urged to discard all copies.  They can be recognized by the file name that ends: “Star2_prvw_for_Oct2015.”

Replacement reports are scheduled to be distributed to providers’ CASPER shared folders by Friday, July 10. They will be available there for 120 days, or until November 6, 2015.  Users can recognize the revised reports by the file name that ends: “Star2REV_prvw_for_Oct2015.” The revised version also includes the word “REVISED” in the initial title, and in the heading on the “scorecard” page.

Providers can request CMS review of their star ratings if they can provide documentation that errors or omissions in the data they have submitted to CMS have impacted their final star rating.  The instructions for submitting such requests are included on Page 3 of the preview report. Given the need to revise the preview reports, the deadline for submitting these requests is being extended to July 24, 2015.

Any questions about these reports can be directed to: HomeHealthQualityQuestions@cms.hhs.gov

Additional information about the home health Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings is available at:https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQIHomeHealthStarRatings.html .