During the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Home Health, Hospice, and DME Open Door Forum on June 29, 2022, CMS reminded hospices that the August refresh of Care Compare will include the two new claims-based measures – Hospice Visits in Last Days of Life and Hospice Care Index. These measures were slated to be publicly reported with the May refresh of Care Compare but this was pushed back to August due to errors in the Provider Preview Reports for these measures issued in March. Therefore, hospices are to disregard the preview reports for March. Corrected preview reports are available now.
The reconsideration period for the FY2023 annual payment update (APU) hospice quality reporting program (HQRP) requirements is coming up. Hospice providers will receive notification from their Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) if they are subject to the APU penalty, and they will also receive notification in their CASPER folder.
Several new resources are scheduled to be posted to the HQRP website soon. These include the latest quarterly communication as well as new video resources that provide an overview of HQRP and an explanation of the HCI measure. CMS is also planning to release a technical report on the HCI. Stay tuned to NAHC Report for more information as these items become available.
There was some concern expressed by hospice participants in the ODF that the Care Compare website currently reflects that data for the HCI and HVLDL is suppressed upon request from the agency. This is not accurate as CMS suppressed the data due to an error in the preview reports, as stated above. CMS indicated that there is an additional update to the footnotes that will be pushed out soon and should provide some additional clarity on this situation for the public.