Home Health & Hospice Week

Follow these four steps to make HHQI a boon rather than a burden.  You might not want to set your watch by it, but the rollout of the home health quality initiative, under which your home health agency's patient outcome figures will be made public in newspapers and on the Home Health Compare Web site, is planned for Thurs. Oct. 30 and Fri. Oct. 31. The launch originally was slated for Oct. 21, but was pushed off to accommodate HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's schedule, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services spokesperson says. The new date still could change based on the whims of Thompson's calendar. But right now, CMS plans to hold a press conference about the measure Oct. 30, the same day the Home Health Compare Web site will go live. On Halloween, ads will run in newspapers around the country listing agencies' scores for three patient outcomes - bathing, ambulation and oral medications (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XII, No. 36, p. 282). In the meantime, you can follow these steps to help your agency benefit, rather than suffer, from the public dissemination of your patient outcomes: 1) Know your numbers. If you haven't already done so, now's the time to get cozy with your patient outcomes figures, recommends Mary St. Pierre with the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. CMS placed agencies' Home Health Compare data in their QIES mailboxes at the beginning of October, points out Chicago-based regulatory consultant Rebecca Friedman Zuber. 2) Identify problem areas. Don't automatically assume subpar outcomes are a result of poor quality of care, advises consultant Linda Rutman with LarsonAllen Health Care Group headquartered in Charlotte, NC. It's likely that documentation problems or assessment techniques are causing your undesirable numbers. In fact, HHAs that want to see quick improvements to their scores should focus their energies on addressing OASIS collection and submission methods rather than care processes, suggests Bob Wardwell with the Visiting Nurse Associations of America. "Many unhappy outcomes have been traced back to errors in OASIS coding and input rather than problems in care," Wardwell says. 3) Formulate your improvement plan. Whether the problem is tricky OASIS questions or care processes, you should address the issue and the way you plan to correct it, counsels Ann Howard with the American Association for Homecare. HHAs should immerse themselves in the complete outcome-based quality improvement process, which directs them on how to formulate such a plan, St. Pierre notes. If you are confused about how to implement OBQI strategies, turn to your state's Quality Improvement Organization for technical help, recommends Joie Glenn with the New Mexico Association for Home Care. "Our QIO was so very helpful and the agencies were [...]