Eli's Hospice Insider

Published on Tue Mar 15, 2022 PDF

Make sure you know the ins and outs of HCI, Visits in Last Days of Life measures.

Medicare is on track to display two new hospice quality measures on Care Compare in May.

Background: Last April, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued its 2022 hospice proposed rule, in which it set May as the date to start displaying two measures on Care Compare: the composite Hospice Care Index and the claims-based Hospice Visits in the Last Days of Life. Then it finalized the time line over industry protest in August. (For details of the measures, see HOP, Vol. 14, No. 11.)

CMS continues to target May for the measures’ debut, a CMS official confirmed in the Feb. 24 Open Door Forum for home health and hospice agencies.

The agency also released revised HCI data in hospices’ Quality Measure (QM) reports in December, she added. CMS corrected an initial problem with that data.

Other hospice-related issues addressed in the forum include:

Care Compare. After a COVID-19 break, hospices have new data up on Care Compare as of this month, the CMS staffer said in the forum.

“Public reporting of quality measure data has resumed following the temporary exemption to HQRP data submission requirements, and the subsequent data freeze after the November 2020 refresh,” CMS explains on its Hospice Quality Reporting Program webpage. “Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospice Survey measure scores continue to exclude Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 of calendar year 2020,” the agency details.

HQRP pay cut. If you’re failing to submit required hospice quality data now, the penalty for that is jumping to 4 percent for 2024, the CMS source reminded hospices. Calendar year 2022 data determines your fiscal year 2024 pay adjustment.

Reminder: Hospices must submit at least 90 percent of Hospice Item Set records within 30 days of the event date (patient’s admission or discharge) for patient admissions/ discharges occurring Jan. 1, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice reviews in its member newsletter. Hospices also must participate monthly in the CAHPS Hospice Survey for those dates, NAHC adds.