02.14.2022

Preview of April Care Compare refresh now available

A preview of the April refresh of Care Compare, with two new OASIS-based measures for home health public reporting, has been made available to home health providers by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Care Compare is the public comparison tool on the website medicare.gov which displays publicly reported information such as agency star ratings and patient survey results. CMS refreshes the site quarterly, and last updated it on Jan. 19. Care Compare will next be refreshed in April.

Preview reports and star ratings for the April refresh are available now in iQIES, the Internet Quality Improvement and Evaluation System which houses survey and certification information as well as other provider data for CMS.

Two new OASIS-based measures for home health will be added for the first time with the April refresh. They are:

  • Percent of Residents Experiencing One or More Falls with Major Injury
  • Application of Percent of Long-Term Care Hospital Patients with an Admission and Discharge Functional Assessment and a Care Plan that Addresses Function

Measures still frozen

The January refresh of Care Compare did not make any changes to claims-based measure results for home health, which have been frozen since the October 2020 refresh of the site.

CMS will continue to display the currently posted claims-based measure results through the April 2022 refresh. Although OASIS-based measures and CAHPS Survey data will be shown with the April refresh, CMS is not expected to resume displaying claims-based measures until the July 2022 refresh.

“Data has been frozen since the October 2020 refresh because CMS granted providers exceptions from submitting data for the first two quarters of 2020 due to the COVID-19 public health emergency,” said Kim Skehan, Director of Compliance, Regulatory and Quality at SimiTree.

“Now CMS is targeting the July 2022 refresh of Care Compare for the resumption of public reporting of claims-based measures for home health,” Skehan said. “The delay will allow more time to analyze the impact of the exclusion on certain aspects of measure calculation such as look-back periods and risk adjustment.”

team member Kim Skehan

Kim Skehan Director, Compliance, Regulatory & Quality

“CMS is targeting the July 2022 refresh of Care Compare for the resumption of public reporting of claims-based measures for home health."

SimiTree can help

Need help complying with home health and hospice regulations? SimiTree consultants can work with your agency to assess and facilitate compliance, implement processes to improve outcomes and prepare for the first performance year of Value-Based Purchasing in 2023. Consulting or full outsourcing services are available for Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) programs.

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