Check out your agency’s 5-star rating made available on Home Health Compare July 16.
 
According to figures provided by CMS and based on quality data collected from 2014, 2.6% of the more than 9,000 agencies rated by the federal Medicare agency earned 5 stars, the top score. Meanwhile, 8.3% earned 4.5 stars, 15.4% got 4 stars, 23.1% got 3.5 stars, 22.6% earned 3 stars, 17% got 2.5 stars, 8.9% got 2 stars, 2.1% got 1.5 stars and 0.1% got 1 star.
 
The remainder did not earn a score because they either had too few patients to qualify for reporting or they had not been certified for less than six months.
 
The 5-star rating system uses half-star increments to rate agencies’ relative, overall performance on nine of the 29 quality measures already posted on Home Health Compare, CMS says.
 
Process measures include: Timely initiation of care, drug education on all medications provided to patient/caregiver, influenza immunization received for current flu season and pneumococcal vaccine ever received.
 
Outcome measures include: Improvement in ambulation, improvement in bed transferring, improvement in bathing, improvement in pain interfering with activity, improvement in dyspnea and acute care hospitalization.
 
The second round of quality of patient care 5-star ratings is scheduled to be published Oct. 8.
 
CMS plans to add star ratings for Home Health CAHPS measures beginning with the January 2016 public reporting period on Home Health Compare.
 
In September, meanwhile, CMS will conduct a dry run.
 
New readmission measures posted
 
CMS also posted for the first time results from its two new, claims-based rehospitalization measures. These measures track hospital readmissions and emergency department use without hospital admission over a 30-day, rather than a 60-day period, as has been reported on Home Health Compare.
 
They will only involve patients who were hospitalized in the five days before they began their home health stay. This includes about 35% of home health patients, according to the 2014 PPS final rule. The new measures allow hospitals and agencies to speak the same language and use the same timeframes for readmissions.
 
Note that agencies’ performance is grouped into three performance categories marked “Better than expected,” “Same as expected” or “Worse than expected.”
 
Essentially, an agency earns a “Better than expected” rating if its score is better than expected based on patient case-mix, the report states.
 
Alternatively, an agency earns a “Worse than expected” score if the agency’s rehospitalization rate is worse than expected based on patient case-mix.
 
HHCAHPS update unchanged
 
CMS has also refreshed the HHCAHPS scores July 16, and they remain unchanged from the previous reporting period. The current reporting period is from January 2014 through December 2014.