Home Health & Hospice Week

Are your patient outcomes good enough to share with the world?  Home health agencies on pins and needles about their patient outcomes going public may see the initiative launch soon. Although it's not yet official, at press time the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expected to announce Nov. 3 as the new launch date for the home health quality initiative, a CMS source tells Eli. Under HHQI, agencies' aggregate patient outcome scores will be available for comparison on the Home Health Compare Web site, and three outcomes - bathing, ambulation and oral medications - will appear in newspapers nationwide (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XII, No. 36, p. 282). The launch date has been bumped back several times. If the newly scheduled date sticks, the Web site will go live Nov. 3 and ads will run Nov. 4. The launch depends on the schedules of CMS Administrator Tom Scully and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, and those officials are engrossed in intensive Medicare negotiations taking place on Capitol Hill (see story, p. 308). The most common use for the HHQI information is likely to be as a marketing tool agencies use to set themselves apart from the competition, notes consultant Tom Boyd with Rohnert Park, CA-based Boyd & Nicholas. In contrast, relatively few consumers are expected to use the information, Boyd says. Boyd urges agencies to check the information on the site to verify that it is correct. Editor's Note: More HHQI information is at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hhqi/default.asp.