October 25 2024
OASIS

What You Might Have Missed in the Oct. 2024 Refresh of Care Compare

by Marian Essey, RN, BSN, COS-C

The home health October 2024 quarterly refresh of Care Compare occurred on October 23rd, but what does this refresh contain that agencies might have missed? There were actually some pretty big changes that occurred, but that might not be obvious, and they’re all related to the Medicare fee-for-service claims-based measures that are on Care Compare.

The Quality of Patient Care Star Rating is now being calculated with the Potentially Preventable Hospitalization (PPH) Measure and not with the Acute Care Hospitalization (ACH) Measure. The PPH measure reports potentially preventable hospitalizations and observation stays that occurred at any time during the patient’s home health stay. The national average for this measure is 9.9%. This shift from ACH to PPH may have impacted an agency’s overall star rating.
The Acute Care Hospitalization (ACH) and Emergency Department Use (ED Use) measures are no longer reported on Care Compare as of this October refresh. They are still included in the expanded HHVBP Model’s applicable measure set for performance year 2024 but will then be replaced in HHVBP with PPH and with the claims-based Discharged to Community (DTC) measure.
Every October, the claims-based measure results are updated on Care Compare to reflect the most recently available data. Therefore, you will ONLY see updated values for your PPH, DTC, Potentially Preventable Readmissions (PPR), and Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary (MSPB) measures in October each year.

Remember that this October refresh will also be the last time that the measure Percent of Patients with an Admission and Discharge Functional Assessment and a Care Plan that Addressed Function will be reported on Care Compare. This measure is reported on Care Compare as How often a patient’s functional abilities were assessed at admission and discharge and functional goals were included in their care plan. In January 2025, this measure is being replaced with the Discharge Function Score measure on Care Compare.