by Amy Mayer-Barger, RN, BS, COS-C
Every quarter, typically in January, April, July, and October, CMS posts quality measure performance scores for home health agencies on the Care Compare website. The site includes measure results for all publicly reported measures: OASIS-Based outcome and process measures, Medicare fee-for-service claims-based measures, and Home Health CAHPS survey results.
For the October 2023 refresh of Care Compare, OASIS-based measure results will be based on home health quality episodes that ended January 1, 2022- December 31, 2022.
Claims-Based Measures
The home health claims-based measure results for the October 2023 refresh of Care Compare will reflect the annual update of claims-based measures and will include stays through December 31, 2022. Although CMS previously excepted quarters 1 and 2 of 2020 from inclusion on Care Compare due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, CMS determined the claims-based measures on Care Compare would return to their normal reporting quarters with the October 2023 refresh.
When claims-based measures were last updated on Care Compare in January 2022, CMS reported fewer quarters of claims-based measures than normal to be able to report the measures but to not include quarters 1 and 2 of 2020.
With this October 2023 refresh of Care Compare, the claims-based measures will now be based on the standard number of quarters, except for the Potentially Preventable 30-Day Post-Discharge Readmission (PPR) measure. The PPR measure will not yet include the standard number of quarters as this measure reports 3-years of data that would include quarters 1 and 2 2020 if it were reported using the normal periods of data. Claims-based measures are typically updated annually in October of each year; however this schedule was modified in the recent past due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
New and Removed Measures
NEW MEASURE
The October 2023 refresh of Care Compare will include the first public reporting of the claims-based measure the Home Health Within-Stay Potentially Preventable Hospitalization (PPH) measure. The PPH measure will report on year of data and will include home health stays from January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2022, for the October 2023 refresh of Care Compare. PPH reports the agency level of risk-adjusted potentially preventable hospitalizations or potentially preventable observation stays that occur within a home health stay. For the PPH measures, a stay is a sequence of health payment episodes that are separated from other HH payment episodes by at least two days.
REMOVED MEASURE
Finally, the October 2023 Refresh will also remove an OASIS measure from public reporting, Drug Education on all Medications Provided to Patient/Caregiver.
October 2023 Care Compare Refresh Reporting Periods
See the table below for the data reflected in the upcoming October 2023 Care Compare Refresh.
| OASIS-Based Measures | January 1, 2022- December 31, 2022 |
| PPH, ACH, and ED Use Measures (Claims-based) | January 1, 2022- December 31, 2022 |
| MSPB and DTC Measures (Claims-based) | January 1, 2021- December 31, 2022 |
| PPR (Claims-based) | July 1, 2020- December 31, 2022 (Using only 10 quarters of data due to the COVID-19 public health emergency exceptions) |
| HH CAHPS (Survey) | April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023 |
Lists of all home health quality measures that are publicly reported can be found here: Home Health Quality Measures – Outcomes (cms.gov)
Follow OASIS Answers, Inc. on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn signup for our email list to keep on top of new CMS information related to HHVBP and OASIS accuracy.
