Home Health & Hospice Week

Pick your point person now to deal with tricky questions later.

Before you know it, you may be basking in the glory of your superior patient outcomes - or doing some fast talking to explain your subpar numbers. If your patient outcomes under the home health quality initiative are on the high or low end of the spectrum, you can expect attention from the local press, referral sources, patients and other groups when the project launches next month (see story, "Quality Improvement:  Your Outcomes Debut on the Web Next Month"). When HHQI launched in the eight pilot states back in May, many local papers covered the event and highlighted agencies with both high and low outcomes. To prepare for the public scrutiny your 11 patient outcomes will receive, experts suggest you take these steps: 1. Review your data. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will send a preview of your HHQI data to your QIES mailbox starting Oct. 1. But if you don't want to wait that long, you can figure out your own HHQI data by taking the 11 outcomes in your outcome-based quality improvement (OBQI) report and putting them through the conversion calculator available under the "Phase I Data" heading at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hhqi/default.asp. Consultant Judy Adams suggests taking that route so you can start analyzing your HHQI data for strengths and weaknesses as soon as possible. "If the reports are less than stellar for the agency, they need to investigate to learn why," says Adams, with the Larson Allen Health Group. 2. Formulate an improvement plan. For low patient outcomes, you should jump start efforts to improve those numbers immediately, experts say. Instructions for improving patient outcomes are in CMS' OBQI Manual at www.obqi.org. Even though your efforts might not result in outcomes improvements for a few quarters at best, it's important to get started and show you are making an effort to improve the quality of your care, says consultant Terri Ayer with Tucson, AZ-based Ayer Associates. 3. Investigate and report errors. If your patient outcomes just don't add up, you should look into them further, Adams recommends. If your investigation uncovers an error, contact your state OASIS coordinator to resolve the problem. 4. Prepare a response. You should examine any low patient outcomes you uncover and decide how you will answer questions about them if the press or others come knocking, Ayer advises. For example, a variance in patient populations might help explain lower outcomes, or poor OASIS data collection techniques might be the culprit. You might simply want to say how you are working to improve the outcomes in that area, Adams notes. If there was an error, you can explain that you are [...]