Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the release of Star Ratings for all Medicare-certified home healthcare agencies, as part of its ongoing rollout of Star Rating systems across healthcare settings on Compare websites on Medicare.gov. CMS has created the Home Health Compare website to share information about home health agencies based on quality of care as well as the experience of patients from the Home Health Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems (HH-CAHPS) surveys.
Dr. Patrick Conway, Acting Principal Deputy Administrator for CMS and Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality stated “Adding star ratings to Home Health Compare is another step forward in our continuing efforts to empower consumers by providing more information to help them make health care decisions, while also encouraging providers to strive for higher levels of quality”.
Star Ratings will be used by consumers and other referral sources to quickly identify differences in the quality of care and the experience shared by patients receiving home health services. The Star Ratings can also help home health agencies identify areas for improvement and adopt best practices. Each home health agency receives a Star Rating composed of the agency’s relative performance on 9 of 29 quality measures already posted on Home Health Compare. These ratings are now officially a part of CMS’ data reporting and will be updated quarterly as more updated information becomes available.
The announcement follows a CMS proposal released last week to launch a new Home Health Value-Based Purchasing model designed to reimburse home health agencies based on the quality of care provided.
For more information on the announcement, please visit https://cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2015-Fact-sheets-items/2015-07-16.html and for more information about the Home Health Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings visit https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQIHomeHealthStarRatings.html.
Prior to this official release, Axxess has long been a CMS approved CAHPS vendor with free Star Ratings preview reports available to their HH-CAHPS customers, along with analytics and benchmarking reports to assist agencies with improving their Star Ratings and positioning them for long-term success.
Home health agencies can contact Axxess at (866) 795-5990 to receive a complimentary Star Rating report.