CMS to publicly report on consumer experiences with Medicare-certified home health agencies

Results from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) national survey that asks patients about their experiences with Medicare-certified home health agencies are now available on the agency’s Quality Care Finder (www.medicare.gov/quality-care-finder) website.

CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner today announced the new tool offering prospective patients, their families and caregivers the chance to compare home health agencies by looking at patient survey results. The Home Health Care Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) Survey, which will be updated every four months with new survey data, will complement the clinical measures already available on the agency’s “Home Health Compare” website.

The Five Star Preview Reports will be available beginning April 16th. To access these reports, select the CASPER Reporting link located at the top of your MDS State Welcome page. Once in the CASPER Reporting system, click on the ‘Folders’ button and access the Five Star Report in your ‘st LTC facid’ folder, where st is the 2-character postal code of the state in which your facility is located and facid is the state-assigned Facility ID of your facility.

Nursing Home Compare will update with March’s Five Star data on April 19th, 2012.

Important Note: The 5 Star Help line (800-839-9290) will be available from April 16th through April 20th, 2012. Provider preview reports will continue to be available on a monthly basis in advance of public posting and will include the dates and hours of helpline availability. BetterCare@cms.hhs.gov is an alternative communication medium to direct inquiries.

CMS has published a second supplementary errata document for version 1.08 of the RAI User’s Manual for the MDS 3.0. This new errata document is version 4.

The two valid errata documents are:

• “MDS 3.0 RAI Manual (v1.08) Errata v3″ with changed manual pages marked with footer “April 2012 (R2)”

• “MDS 3.0 RAI Manual (v1.08) Errata v4″ with changed manual pages marked with footer “April 2012 (R3)”

Neither errata document is meant to replace the other, but taken together, both documents contain replacement pages for the MDS 3.0 RAI Manual (v1.08). Providers who download and print the full MDS 3.0 RAI Manual (v1.08), will need to download and print both errata documents. Each errata document begins with a table, listing all identified corrections and the pages to which they have been applied. The documents provided after the table listing are the actual corrected replacement pages for insertion into the printed manual.

During the first week of April 2012, CMS revamped its website, changing many of the links for pages that SNFs and NFs use to access critical information.

To help guide you through the changes, we have provided an up-to-date list of some CMS Key links.   Links are broken out by topic: MDS Links, SNF PPS Links, Survey-Certification Links, Beneficiary Notices Initiative Links, Online Manual System Links, and Additional Links.

The MDS 3.0 Facility and Resident Quality Measure Preview reports are available in your facility’s shared folder. These reports are similar to the MDS 2.0 Facility and Resident Quality Measure Preview reports, but have been updated to contain the new MDS 3.0 Quality Measures.

The MDS 3.0 Facility Preview report displays the quarterly numerator, denominator and reported percent values for each of the publicly reported MDS 3.0 quality measures. This report will contain quality measure data for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2011. The preview report allows the provider to see their measure percent values prior to being posted on the Nursing Home Compare website.

The MDS 3.0 Resident Preview report displays the list of residents who triggered one or more of the publicly reported MDS 3.0 Quality Measures. For the Influenza or Pneumococcal vaccination measures, only residents who did not receive the vaccinations are listed. The information from this report is not publicly reported and is for use by the provider only.

To access these reports, select the CASPER Reporting link located at the top of your MDS State Welcome page. Once in the CASPER Reporting system, select the ‘Folders’ button and access the MDS 3.0 Preview Reports in your ‘st LTC facid’ folder, where ‘st’ is the 2-character postal code of the state in which your facility is located and ‘facid’ is the state-assigned Facility ID of your facility.

These reports are not the same as the Five Star Facility Preview reports. Any questions about the MDS 3.0 Facility and Resident Quality Measure Preview Reports should be directed to the QIES Help Desk at help@qtso.com or 1 (800) 339-9313. Any questions regarding the Five Star reports should be emailed toBetterCare@cms.hhs.gov.

Section Q resources from the 2012 CMS MDS 3.0 National Conference have been posted at the conference website.  Or retreive the source documents from our site on the “Downoads” page

The QIES Technical Support Office has updated the MDS 3.0 Provider User’s Guide, which details how to submit MDS 3.0 records, obtain reports, interpret error messages, etc.

The following sections were updated in February 2012:

Table of Contents
Section 2, Overview
Section 3, Functionality
Access the entire manual here: https://www.qtso.com/mds30.html

Access the updated Table of Contents here: https://www.qtso.com/download/guides/MDS/mds_30/Prvdr_Users_TOC.pdf

Access the updated Section 2 here: https://www.qtso.com/download/guides/MDS/mds_30/Prvdr_Users_Sec2.pdf

Access the updated Section 3 here: https://www.qtso.com/download/guides/MDS/mds_30/Prvdr_Users_Sec3.pdf

The manual was previously updated in September 2011. If you did not update then, please review the entire manual for potential changes.

(Note: There are times when the above link takes you to https://www.qtso.com. If that happens, just click on “MDS 3.0″ in the menu on the left side.)

CMS has released version 1.08 of the RAI Manual. This version goes into effect April 1, 2012.

Access the revised manual, updated pages and change tables by clicking here.

With the October 1 payment changes behind us, the post-acute industry is waking up to the next hot topic: Outcomes Reporting.

Up until recently, nursing homes have been largely off the radar for direct readmission scrutiny. That could all change with a new policy currently proposed by the Obama Administration, one given the nod by The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, a trade organization representing for-profit providers.  If the proposal passes, everyone – including hospitals and nursing homes with high readmission rates – will be squeezed.

Demand is on the rise for Outcomes Reporting as the new must-have core competency by the C-Suite.  Execs are turning to IT and Clinical to team up, mine data, and do detective work to answer questions like:  who are we sending back to the hospital?  Why?  And importantly…what could we have done to keep them?  “The data they’re looking for goes way beyond what can be mined from MDSs,” explains Tina Schrader-Berte, RAC-CT, Industry Financial & Performance Operations expert with Pro Ed Continuum, LLC.  “Providers must be ready to take a 360 degree view of their operation – to root out every possible cause of readmission, and challenge interdisciplinary teams  to proactively drive programs that have measurable results.  Data-driven decision making will be essential.”

Outcomes Reporting, must, as a result, come from every corner of the operation – and be creatively used to challenge the status quo.  Outcomes reporting is like a Swiss Army Knife; it has many uses.  As a marketing tool, outcomes show hospitals your readmit rates, but the real power lies in dozens of other reports you can use across the spectrum of your clinical operations to drive quality and continuous improvement.  The ability to easily mix and match many reports across your operation is key.

Need more information?  Download a white paper “ Marketing Your Outcomes: How to Make Your Most Strategic Information Assets Work to Your Competitive Advantage to Win Medicare Census.”