New Quality Measures Posted on Nursing Home Compare
CMS Press Release 4/27/16:
CMS Adds New Quality Measures to Nursing Home Compare
Largest addition of quality measures to Nursing Home Compare since 2003
On April 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) added six new quality measures to its consumer-based Nursing Home Compare website (https://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/search.html). Three of these six new quality measures are based on Medicare-claims data submitted by hospitals, which is significant because this is the first time CMS is including quality measures that are not based solely on data that are self-reported by nursing homes. These three quality measures measure the rate of rehospitalization, emergency room use, and community discharge among nursing home residents. They include:
- Percentage of short-stay residents who were successfully discharged to the community (Medicare claims- and MDS-based)
- Percentage of short-stay residents who have had an outpatient emergency department visit (Medicare claims- and MDS-based)
- Percentage of short-stay residents who were re-hospitalized after a nursing home admission (Medicare claims- and MDS-based)
- Percentage of short-stay residents who made improvements in function (MDS-based)
- Percentage of long-stay residents whose ability to move independently worsened (MDS-based)
- Percentage of long-stay residents who received an antianxiety or hypnotic medication (MDS-based)
“These new quality measures broaden the set of quality measures already on the site so that patients, their family members, and caregivers have more meaningful information when they consider facilities,” said CMS Deputy Administrator and Chief Medical Officer Patrick Conway, M.D., MS.
With today’s quality measure updates, CMS is nearly doubling the number of short-stay measures, which reflect care provided to residents who are in the nursing home for 100 days or less, on Nursing Home Compare. CMS is also providing information about key short-stay outcomes, including the percentage of residents who are successfully discharged and the rate of Activities of Daily Life (ADL) improvement among short-stay residents.
Beginning in July 2016, CMS will incorporate all of these measures, except for the antianxiety/hypnotic medication measure, into the calculation of the Nursing Home Five-Star Quality Ratings. CMS is not incorporating the antianxiety/hypnotic medication measure because it has been difficult to determine appropriate nursing home benchmarks for the acceptable use of these medications.
Nursing Home Compare is the agency’s public information website that provides information on how well Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes provide care to their residents. With today’s update, it now reports information on 24 quality measures for 15,655 nursing home providers on Nursing Home Compare.
The definitions and technical specifications for the new quality measures can be found in the updated Quality Measures User's Manual (v10.0), effective April 1, 2016.
In order to help nursing homes incorporate these new quality measures into their Quality Assurance and Process Improvement (QAPI) processes, CMS is also providing a list of publicly available QI resources here including this resource guide specifically related to the new quality measures.
Important note to LeadingAge Quality Metrics and EQUIP users:
Since CMS has also released the publicly reported data, LeadingAge New York is working to update Nursing Home Quality Metrics with the new QMs and facility rates. Members will receive an email notice of the update as soon as it is completed.
The three new MDS-based measures are currently being programmed into EQUIP for Quality. EQUIP users will be notified via e-mail as soon as the update has been completed.
Contact: Kathy Pellatt, 518-867-8848, kpellatt@leadingageny.org