Important Home Health CAHPS Information from The Jackson Group

As many of you are aware, CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) has implemented a standardized patient satisfaction survey for home care agencies across the nation.  CAHPS stands for Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, and is part of a program to provide the public with data on patient experiences and outcomes.

This survey is similar to the one that is currently being used in hospitals and nursing homes, and the results gathered will be shared through a web site that will allow comparisons across agencies, states, and regions.  The goal is to give potential patients a wealth of comparable information at their fingertips to aid in their choice of home care provider.

There have been some recent updates and important information shared in the past few weeks about this process:

• The HH-CAHPS survey instrument has been finalized and is available for review at https://www.homehealthcahps.org/.

• The survey can only be administered to patients who are over the age of 18, those who have received at least two visits over the past two months and do not currently receive Hospice care or Maternity care.

• Home Health agencies can start using the HH-CAHPS survey instrument in October 2009 on a voluntary basis.

• Home Health agencies that serve less than 60 patients in a given year are exempt from the survey process.

• All Home Health agencies must use an approved HH-CAHPS vendor to administer the survey.

• Agencies can start the survey process at any time after October 2009; the process runs on a quarterly basis, so participation would need to start at the beginning of a calendar quarter.

• Agencies can take part in a one-month “dry run” of the survey in order to test the process.  “Dry run” results, although submitted to CMS, will not be publicly reported.

• Results of the HH-CAHPS process and the individual agencies’ results will be publicly reported in 2011, using the past four quarters worth of survey results.

• There is a proposal currently making rounds that would make participation in the HH-CAHPS survey process required in 2010 in order to receive the full 2011 Medicare payment update.

Although the survey process is voluntary at the moment, there are several reasons to consider starting the survey at your own agency in the coming months.  Most importantly, the proposal on the table is to make the survey required in 2010; starting in the coming months will ensure that your organization gets a head start on the process and works out any complications before the survey becomes mandatory.

Based on our experience with the Hospital CAHPS process and its similar implementation schedule, we feel very strongly that this Home Health survey will become required at some point in 2010.

Also, as consumers start to use the public web site to compare agencies in 2011 you want to make sure your agency is not shown as “missing” or “unavailable” data because you opted not to take part in the survey.  We have seen this happen with hospitals on the H-CAHPS process and it causes questions in the public’s eyes as to why that organization did not provide any patient satisfaction data while others in the area did.

Our firm, The Jackson Group (www.thejacksongroup.com), located in Hickory North Carolina, was one of the initial survey firms invited to meet with the American Hospital Association in the early stages of development of the Hospital CAHPS project and has been providing H-CAHPS survey services to many hospitals over the past several years.  We are currently the only CAHPS approved vendor in the Carolinas, and we are excited to be offering the Home Health CAHPS survey as one of our newest services.

Do you want to learn more about the HH-CAHPS process, how it will work, and what it means for your organization?  We will be presenting at the North Carolina AHHC’s Leadership Conference on October 26-27 and providing a wealth of information about the topic, ranging from how to work with a survey vendor, what are the responsibilities of the agency, to what kind of data the survey will provide your organization.

In the meantime, we invite you to ask us any questions you may have about the survey by contacting us at 800-554-0373 or by email at info@thejacksongroup.com.  We hope to see you in Concord, North Carolina in October!