Public Comment on two candidate Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Ventilator Weaning Quality Measures

This is a brief reminder that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is currently soliciting stakeholder feedback on two candidate Long-term Care Hospital (LTCH) ventilator weaning quality measures, listed below, through Thursday June 9, 2016. The Call for Public Comment, which was posted on May 19th, 2016,  can be found on CMS’s public comment webpage athttps://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/CallforPublicComment.html. To inform your comments, please download and review the zip file titled “Development of LTCH Ventilator Weaning Quality Measures [ZIP, 605KB]” under the Download section at the bottom of the webpage. 

The CMS has contracted with RTI International to develop and maintain quality measures for multiple post-acute care settings, including long-term care hospitals. The contract name and number are Development and Maintenance of Symptom Management Measures (HHSM-500-2013- 13015I; Task Order HHSM-500-T0001). As part of its measure development process, CMS requests interestedparties to submit comments on the candidate or concept measures that may be suitable for thisproject. CMS is therefore submitting two candidate ventilator weaning quality measures (1 outcome measure and 1 process measure) for public comment: 

1. Ventilator Weaning (Liberation) Rate
2. Compliance with Spontaneous Breathing Trial (SBT) (including Tracheostomy Collar Trial (TCT) or Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) Breathing Trial) by Day 2 of the LTCH Stay

In addition to general comments, the measure developer would particularly appreciate input concerning, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Utility of each candidate measure and variation across providers
• Potential unintended consequences of each measure as currently specified
• Feasibility of determining invasively mechanically ventilated patient initial status as weaning or non-weaning by the end of Day 2 of the LTCH stay, where Day 1 is the day of admission.  (It is understood that weaning status may change during the course of patient stay.)
• Importance of risk adjustment to the Ventilator Weaning (Liberation) Rate outcome measure
• Feasibility and utility of including partial weaning at discharge as an outcome 

We encourage you to submit comments on the measure. Please email all comments toVentilatorWeaningQM@rti.org by the closing date, June 9th, 2016 at midnight [12:00AM ET]

Please forward this e-mail to other individuals who may be interested in reviewing these documents and submitting comments.