Earlier this year hospices submitted data to CMS on two quality measures that impacted the 2015 payment year. Specifically, hospices had to submit data on two measures – a structural measure and the NQF #209 pain measure – by April 1, 2014. The data was collected by the hospices during calendar year 2013. On August 18, 2014 CMS released the analysis of this data, Hospice Quality Reporting Program Fiscal Year 2015 Reporting Cycle Data Analysis. Approximately 3,500 hospices submitted and attested to the data for both measures.
Nearly 100% of hospices answered “yes” to the only structural measure question: “Does your QAPI program contain 3 or more patient care related quality indicators?” This is consistent with the prior year’s response.
The findings from the FY 2015 closely mirror those from FY 2014 for both the structural measure and the NQF #0209 measure. This is true despite the fact that FY 2014 was based on one quarter of data and FY 2015 was based on four quarters of data. These findings support CMS’s decision to discontinue both measures for future reporting cycles in favor of implementing patient-level data collection using the Hospice Item Set (HIS) in the HQRP to collect standardized data to calculate seven QMs (six NQF-endorsed QMs and a modification of one NQF-endorsed QM).
Read more in the NAHC Report article.
