|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Medicare News
Medicare to Test Pay for Performance in Home Health
Care Demonstration
CMS will begin soliciting home health agencies for
the project this fall
Oct. 11, 2007 - The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) today announced plans for a home health
pay-for-performance demonstration, an important new step in its drive to
become a more effective purchaser of quality healthcare.
CMS will begin soliciting home health agencies for
the project this fall with the actual demonstration performance period
to begin January 1, 2008. The demonstration will operate for two years
in seven states.
This is yet another example of our continued
commitment to provide value-based purchasing initiatives for Medicare
beneficiaries in all health care settings. It will support our key goal
of achieving better quality of care by rewarding providers on the basis
of patient outcomes and efficiency. said Kerry Weems, Acting
Administrator of CMS.
Under the demonstration, home health agencies (HHAs)
will be eligible to receive incentive payments if their quality
improvement efforts result in the highest performance levels or
significant improvements in patient outcomes.
The availability of incentive payments will depend
on whether or not the demonstration results in improvements in the
quality of care and the actual savings to the Medicare program overall -
not just for home health services provided to the patients served under
the demonstration.
System wide savings can be achieved when a home
health agency prevents a re-hospitalization of the Medicare beneficiary
or a further complication stemming from their illness.
As the payments will be funded out of Medicare
savings, none of the participating organizations will face payment
reductions as a result of their participation in the demonstration.
Seven quality measures from the existing
Outcome-Based Quality Improvement (OBQI) set will be used to evaluate
HHA performance so that HHAs will not have to submit additional data in
order to participate.
The measures are:
● Incidence of Acute Care Hospitalization
● Incidence of Any Emergent Care
● Improvement in Bathing
● Improvement in Ambulation/Locomotion
● Improvement in Transferring
● Improvement in Status of Surgical Wounds
● Improvement in Management of Oral Medications
HHAs that agree to participate will be randomly
assigned to either a study group or a control group. Those agencies
assigned to the study group will have their patients outcomes monitored
over time. Those agencies with the best patient outcomes among
participants in their states, or with the highest degree of improvement
relative to the previous year, will be eligible for incentive payments.
CMS has selected the following states to provide a
nationally representative sample of both HHAs and Medicare beneficiaries
who utilize home health services:
● Northeast region: Connecticut, Massachusetts
● Southern region: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee
● Midwestern region: Illinois
● Western region: California
CMS will be soliciting HHAs in the seven states to
participate in the demonstration later this month. Additional
information about the demonstration can be found by
Clicking Here.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
