With the OASIS-D assessment form going into effect on January 1st, 2019, SHP is pleased to provide home health agencies with a complete side-by-side comparison of the OASIS-C2 and expected OASIS-D assessment forms. This easy-to-follow guide is an excellent reference for anyone who works with OASIS Assessments and will improve accuracy, help reduce coding errors, and potentially reduce the number of returned claims.

The annual SHPBest recognition program was created to acknowledge home health and hospice providers that consistently provide high quality service. SHP would like to congratulate the 2017 SHP Best-of-the-Best winners, who have been recognized for achieving the highest overall HHCAHPS patient satisfaction or CAHPS Hospice caregiver satisfaction scores of all eligible SHP clients during the 2017 calendar year.

July usually starts the month off with fireworks, but this year the proposed rule was issued on July 2nd with its own bang at just under 600 pages. The big news - Home Health Groupings Model (HHGM) is now the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). Below are a few other highlights from the proposed rule related to the Home Health Value Based Purchasing (HHVBP) program, Home Health Quality Reporting Program (HHQRP), new Home Infusion Benefit and the changing HH PPS case-mix weights (CMW).

CMS announced on their Medicare Learning Network (MLN) national call a proposed change to the Quality of Patient Care (QoPC) Star Ratings starting next year. CMS has proposed to eliminate the “Drug Education on all Medications Provided to Patient/Caregiver” measure and add the “Improvement in Management of Oral Medications” measure to the QoPC algorithm. What seems to be overlooked with these subtle changes is how often Star Ratings by provider change each quarter.

With the second performance year (CY 2017) of HHVBP over, I wanted to see how the year over year measure outcomes changed across our SHP national database. Comparing the same agencies year over year it appears both HHVBP states and Non-VBP states improved about the same on their average outcomes and process measure scores with little change in the HHCAHPS scores. Notice that with a few exceptions, VBP agencies had better outcomes than their non-VBP state agency peers. I expect CMS has noticed that too. In deciding what scores you want to target, it is best to know what percentile rank you want to realistically achieve.

Amedisys has been steadily expanding their breadth of care into markets across the continuum. Part of the company’s strategy of adding personal care services to improve care involves enhancing overall capabilities through new technologies. In 2016 Amedisys announced it would partner with Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP) to help achieve this goal.

On April 28th, CMS issued the FY 2019 Hospice Payment and Quality Reporting proposed rule. Along with the typical annual payment updates, there were new proposals to the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP) for consideration, but no mention of the Hospice Evaluation and Reporting Tool (HEART).

On February 28th CMS ended the month hosting their regular Home Health Open Door Forum with some very notable updates to the home care industry. With little fanfare and during the Q&A portion, CMS responded to a question regarding the timing of the new OASIS forms as OASIS-D!

The partnership between NHIA and SHP supports the association’s longstanding Data Initiative effort created to collect and report patient outcomes data in a standardized manner and to provide the industry with the tools needed to establish national benchmarks for home infusion quality. Utilizing its web-based, automated, real-time data solution for home infusion pharmacies, SHP will work with NHIA to collect, aggregate, and report data from any eligible provider that can be used to establish future national standards for the field.

At their December 14th HH QRP webinar, CMS announced the deletion of the Influenza Immunization Received for Current Flu Season measure from the algorithm in calculating the home health Quality of Patient Care (QoPC) Star ratings. CMS made this after the month-long comment period ended in November 2017. The change will take effect in the April 2018 Home Health Compare (HHC) refresh.