Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2023
While the hospice community has generally embraced the concept of a Special Focus Program (SFP) to address quality concerns, some are troubled by the government’ methodology for identifying providers.
CMS plans to launch the program in 2024, according to language included in the agency’s proposed home health rule for 2024. The chief concern is the algorithm that the agency is going to usse to select providers for the program.
The algorithm is based on numerous quality indicators, including the Hospice Care Index (HCI) score, complaints to CMS about a provider, survey results and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) scores. Based on those metrics, CMS will select those in the lowest 10% for the SFP.
“The fundamental problem is that a large portion of hospices don’t report CAHPS data, and only a third of them report star ratings from the CAHPS data. About a quarter of them don’t report HCI data,” Larry Atkins, chief policy officer for the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI) told Hospice News. “A lot of hospices are not going to have the quality data. And for those hospices, [CMS] just generally assumes that they’re operating at about the average level, which means they won’t be selected.”
Click here for the full article.
About Corridor
For over 30 years, Corridor has partnered with home health and hospice providers, delivering powerful solutions to support the unique challenges of caring for patients in the home. Our team of operations executives, clinicians, and nationally renowned industry experts have run provider organizations and resolved the same challenges you face. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.
To receive the most important industry updates, insights and news impacting home health and hospice, please make sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
