Last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the Hospice Visits in the Last Days of Life (HVLDL) and the Hospice Care Index (HCI) claims-based measures were not publicly displayed as planned in the May 2022 refresh. NAHC reached out to CMS about this and learned that there were technical errors in the data calculation, which were discovered well after the Preview Reports for these measures were released to hospices in March.
CMS is mandated to give providers a full 30 days to review the Preview Reports. Because of this, there was not time to re-release Preview Reports prior to the planned May 2022 refresh. Hospices should disregard the Preview Reports released in March for the HVLDL and HCI.
CMS is targeting the August 2022 refresh for the inaugural display of these quality measures and announced that new Provider Preview Reports for the HVLDL and HCI are now available in hospice’s CASPER (Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reports) folder.
Hospices utilized data from the incorrect scores in the Preview Reports to plan for performance improvement and they may have to adjust their priorities and plans now that the new Preview Reports are available.
The recently available provider Preview Reports also contain the Preview Reports for other publicly reported measures that will be updated in the August 2022 Care Compare refresh. These include the CAHPS Hospice Star Rating and the HIS Comprehensive Assessment measure.
Once released in CASPER, providers will have 30 days during which to review their quality measure results. Although the actual “preview period” is 30 days, the reports will continue to be available for another 30 days, or a total of 60 days. The preview period for the latest Provider Preview Report lasts from May 25, 2022 to June 27, 2022.
CMS encourages providers to download and save their Hospice Provider Preview Reports for future reference, as they will no longer be available in CASPER after this 60-day period.
