Eli's Hospice Insider

Published on Thu Apr 18, 2019 PDF

Hospices can see their own 7-day data.

Hospice Compare soon will show your stats for hospice visits when death is imminent — but only part of them.

“The three-day Hospice Visits when Death is Imminent measure will be publicly reported on Hospice Compare in summer 2019, as planned,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in a message to providers. But “the seven-day Hospice Visits when Death is Imminent measure will not be publicly reported at this time because it did not currently meet readiness standards for public reporting.”

The problems included reliability, validity, and reportability, a CMS official said in the agency’s April 3 Open Door Forum for home care providers, including hospices.

What’s next: “CMS will conduct additional testing on the seven-day measure to determine if changes to the measure specifications and/or the method for displaying the measure are needed,” it says in a newly posted fact sheet on the development. Results of additional testing will “inform the next steps,” the CMS staffer told forum attendees.

Meanwhile, the three-day measure data will go up as planned. Specifically, “we are targeting August 2019 to begin publicly reporting the Hospice Visits when Death is Imminent measure (three-day measure),” a CMS spokesperson tells Eli.

And hospices can go ahead and get a look at both their three- and seven-day data on their CASPER Quality Measure reports. “CASPER QM Reports are intended for providers’ internal use to aid hospices in quality improvement efforts,” CMS says in a newly posted question-and-answer set. “Although the measure will not be publicly displayed at this time, CMS believes that it is important for providers to internally review and be informed by these data, to ensure that they are providing their patients and caregivers the support they need in the patients’ last days of life.”

Hospices won’t find the seven-day data in their Provider Preview Reports, however, because the data won’t be going up on Hospice Compare, the CMS source explained. Preview reports are only “intended for providers to preview their data immediately prior to it being publicly displayed on Hospice Compare,” the Q&As highlight.

Don’t stop reporting: CMS collects the data for the seven-day measure via O5010, O5020, and O5030 on the Hospice Item Set (HIS) V2.00.0, the agency explains in a new fact sheet on the measure pair. While public display of the seven-day measure portion is on indefinite hold, hospices “are still required to complete these items accurately and completely, and submit HIS records to CMS in a timely manner regardless of the decision to not publicly report the measure at this time,” the agency stresses in the fact sheet.

This shouldn’t place any extra burden on hospices “whatsoever,” though, the CMS official assured listeners. That’s because they already have to report those HIS items for the three-day measure that will be publicly reported.

Resources: Links to the two-page fact sheet and the three-page Q&A set are in the “Downloads” box at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/Hospice-Quality-Reporting/Public-Reporting-Background-and-Announcements.html.