Agencies nationally continue to see quality improvement in publicly reported data, according to the latest quarterly release published on Care Compare on Wednesday, April 24.
 
OASIS-based measures have been updated to reflect data from July 2022 to June 2023.
 
Patients continued to show improvement on several OASIS items. The following results are comparing April 2024 and April 2023:
  • How often patients got better at walking or moving around — climbed to 86.1% from 83.7%.
  • How often patients got better at getting in and out of bed — climbed to 87.1% from 85.0%.
  • How often patients got better at bathing — climbed to 88% from 85.9%.
  • How often patients' breathing improved — climbed to 88.3% from 86.3%.
  • How often patients got better at taking their drugs correctly by mouth — climbed to 84.2% from 81.4%.
“How often the home health team determined whether patients received a flu shot for the current flu season” is down from 74% last April to 72.8% in the latest data. In April 2022, the agencies reporting that they had checked flu shot status was at 78.2%.
 
Emergency department visits climbed slightly in the April 2024 report, from 11.6% in April 2023 to 11.9%.
 
For the HHCAHPS, the latest data reflects October 2022 to September 2023. The national results saw a 1 percentage point increase for four of the five publicly reported measures:
  • Percent of patients who reported that their home health team communicated well with them: 86%
  • Percent of patients who reported that their home health team discussed medicines, pain, and home safety with them: 82%
  • Percent of patients who gave their home health agency a rating of 9 or 10: 85%
  • Percent of patients who reported YES, they would definitely recommend the home health agency to friends and family: 79%
The percentage of patients who reported that their home health team gave care in a professional way was unchanged at 88%.
Claims-based measures were not updated for this quarter and continue to reflect calendar year 2022 data.