CMS to Freeze Public Posting of HH QRP Data

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a Tip Sheet outlining the posting of Home Health Quality Reporting Program (HH QRP) data. The purpose of the Tip Sheet is to provide information to help home health agencies (HHAs) understand CMS's public reporting strategy for the HH QRP to account for CMS quality data submissions that were either optional or excepted due to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE).

The impact on CMS’s Home Health Compare website refreshes is also outlined. The Tip Sheet serves as a follow-up document to the HH QRP COVID-19 PHE Tip Sheet published in July 2020, which provided practical guidance to address home health quality data submissions after July 1, 2020, once the temporary HH QRP exceptions from the COVID-19 PHE ended.

For Q1 2020 and Q2 2020, providers were excepted from data submissions. For this reason, CMS will hold the data constant (i.e., freeze the data) following the October 2020 refresh. The affected Compare site refreshes that were scheduled to contain Calendar Year (CY) 2020 COVID-19 data (Q1 2020 and Q2 2020) include January 2021, April 2021, July 2021, and October 2021. After the October 2021 refresh, CMS plans to resume public reporting.

Contact: Meg Everett, meverett@leadingageny.org, 518-929-9342