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Tag: Quality

Quality Program Changes

May 2, 2019

While CMS is proposing several changes to the hospital quality reporting and payment programs, none of these changes represent significant structural or procedural changes to the programs.

Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR)
CMS is proposing the following adjustments to the program:
* Adopt two opioid-related eCQMs (Safe Use of Opioids – Concurrent Prescribing and Hospital Harm – Opioid-related Adverse Events).
* Adopt the Hybrid Hospital-Wide All-Cause Readmission (Hybrid HWR) measure, beginning with two voluntary reporting periods running from 7/1/2021 to 6/30/2022 and from 7/1/2022 to 6/30/2023.
* Remove the Claims-based Hospital-Wide All-Cause Unplanned Readmission measure (HWR claims-only measure) beginning with the FY2026 payment determination.
* Extend current eCQM reporting and submission requirements for both the CY2020 reporting (FY2022 payment) and the CY2021 reporting (FY2023 payment) periods.
* Change eCQM reporting and submission requirements for the CY2022 reporting (FY2024 payment) period, such that hospitals would be required to report one self-selected calendar quarter of data for three self-selected eCQMs and the proposed Safe Use of Opioids eCQM.
* Continue requiring that EHRs be certified to all available eCQMs used in the Hospital IQR program for the CY2020 and subsequent reporting periods.

Hospital Value Based Purchasing (HVBP)
CMS is proposing that the HVBP program use the same data used by the HAC program for purposes of calculating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health Safety Network (NHSN) Healthcare-Associated Infection (HAI) measures beginning with the CY2020 data collection, when the hospital IQR program will no longer collect data on those measures.

CMS is not proposing to add or remove any measures for the FY2022 and FY2023 program years. However, CMS is proposing to establish new performance standards for FY2024 and FY2025.

Hospital Readmission Reduction (HRR)
CMS is proposing the following adjustments to the program:
* Adopt a measure removal policy that aligns with the policies for other quality programs.
* Update the definition of “dual-eligible” as a beneficiary who has full benefit status in both the Medicare and Medicaid programs for the month the beneficiary was discharged, except for those beneficiaries who die in the month of discharge, who will be identified using the previous month’s data.
* Adopt a process to make nonsubstantive changes to the payment adjustment factors, which would include updated naming or locations of data file or minor discrepancies, but which would not include different methodologies to use data or the use of a different component in the methodology.
* Update 42 CFR 412.152 and 412.154 to reflect policies finalized in previous Rules.

Hospital Acquired Conditions (HAC)
CMS is proposing the following adjustments to the program:
* Adopt a measure removal policy that aligns with the policies for other quality programs.
* Clarify policies for validating CDC NHSN HAI measures.
* Adopt the collection periods for the FY2022 program year.
-CMS PSI 90 measure – 24-month period from 7/1/2018 to 6/30/2020
-CDC NHSN HAI measures – 24-month period from 1/1/2019 to 12/31/2020.
* Update 42 CFR 412.172(f) to reflect policies finalized in the FFY2019 IPPS Final Rule.

Quality Program Changes

September 16, 2016

While CMS is finalizing several of the proposed changes to the hospital quality reporting and payment programs, none of these changes represent significant structural or procedural changes to the programs.

Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR)

CMS is making the following adjustments to the program:

Adopt the Hybrid Hospital-Wide All-Cause Readmission (Hybrid HWR) measure, beginning with two voluntary reporting periods running from 7/1/2021 to 6/30/2022 and from 7/1/2022 to 6/30/2023.
Adopt the Safe Use of Opioids – Concurrent Prescribing electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM), with a clarification and update, beginning with CY 2021 reporting period/FY 2023 payment determination.
Remove the Claims-based Hospital-Wide All-Cause Unplanned Readmission measure (HWR claims-only measure) beginning with the FY2026 payment determination.
Extend current eCQM reporting and submission requirements for both the CY2020 reporting (FY2022 payment) and the CY2021 reporting (FY2023 payment) periods.
Change eCQM reporting and submission requirements for the CY2022 reporting (FY2024 payment) period, such that hospitals would be required to report one self-selected calendar quarter of data for three self-selected eCQMs and the proposed Safe Use of Opioids eCQM.
Continue requiring that EHRs be certified to all available eCQMs used in the Hospital IQR program for the CY2020 and subsequent reporting periods.

CMS is not finalizing its proposal to adopt the Hospital Harm – Opioid-related Adverse Events eCQM.

Hospital Value Based Purchasing (HVBP)

CMS will now require that the HVBP program use the same data used by the HAC program for purposes of calculating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health Safety Network (NHSN) Healthcare-Associated Infection (HAI) measures beginning with the CY2020 data collection, when the hospital IQR program will no longer collect data on those measures.

CMS is not adding or removing any measures for the FY2022 and FY2023 program years. However, CMS will be establishing new performance standards for FY2024 and FY2025.

Hospital Readmission Reduction (HRR)

CMS will adopt the following adjustments to the program:

Establish the performance period for the FY 2022 program year.
Adopt a measure removal policy that aligns with the policies for other quality programs.
Update the definition of “dual-eligible” as a beneficiary who has full benefit status in both the Medicare and Medicaid programs for the month the beneficiary was discharged, except for those beneficiaries who die in the month of discharge, who will be identified using the previous month’s data.
Adopt a process to make nonsubstantive changes to the payment adjustment factors, which would include updated naming or locations of data file or minor discrepancies, but which would not include different methodologies to use data or the use of a different component in the methodology.
Update 42 CFR 412.152 and 412.154 to reflect policies finalized in previous Rules.

Hospital Acquired Conditions (HAC)

CMS will make the following adjustments to the program:

Adopt a measure removal policy that aligns with the policies for other quality programs.
Clarify policies for validating CDC NHSN HAI measures.
Adopt the collection periods for the FY2022 program year.
- CMS PSI 90 measure – 24-month period from 7/1/2018 to 6/30/2020
- CDC NHSN HAI measures – 24-month period from 1/1/2019 to 12/31/2020.
Update 42 CFR 412.172(f) to reflect policies finalized in the FFY2019 IPPS Final Rule.

Hospitals are Throwing Out Organs & Denying Transplants to Meet Federal Standards

August 11, 2016

From: STAT – 8/11/16

Article Excerpt:

Hospitals across the United States are throwing away less-than-perfect organs and denying the sickest people lifesaving transplants out of fear that poor surgical outcomes will result in a federal crackdown.

As a result, thousands of patients are losing the chance at surgeries that could significantly prolong their lives, and the altruism of organ donation is being wasted.

“It’s gut-wrenching and mind-boggling,” said Dr. Adel Bozorgzadeh, a transplant surgeon at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass.

He coauthored a recent study that showed a sharp uptick in the number of people dropped from organ transplant waiting lists since the federal government set transplant standards in 2007. These standards are tied to federal hospital ratings and Medicare funding, which is the main payer for transplants and a key source of income for hospitals. And hospitals’ ability to meet those standards helps determine their reputation within the medical community. Surgeries involving imperfect organs and extremely ill patients are more risky, so hospitals that do many of them run the risk of poor outcomes that may hurt their performance on the standards.

Soon after the study was published in April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services changed its benchmarks to give hospitals — and surgeries — more leeway to fail. But patients and doctors are still uneasy about the erosion of one of transplantation’s fundamental principles: the sicker you are, the higher you move up the waiting list for donated organs.

“This has been a nightmare, a very expensive nightmare,” said Kathy Barnes, whose husband, James, has been denied a liver transplant by three hospitals, but who is on the waiting list at UMass Memorial.

“Why won’t they do it?” she asked. “It seems like some of them are just looking for an excuse to say no, and I don’t understand that.”

The study by Bozorgzadeh, published by the American College of Surgeons, found that the increasing reluctance to perform transplants on the sickest patients is directly tied to the onset of the standards enforced by CMS.In the first five years after adoption of the standards, more than 4,300 transplant candidates were removed from waiting lists by hospitals.That’s up 86 percent from the 2,311 patients delisted in the five years prior to the regulation.

Bozorgzadeh said the federal regulations are turning transplantation into a numbers game that makes it harder to help patients who deserve a fighting chance.

“If you have young guy who has a 100 percent chance of dying, but only a 30 percent chance of dying with a transplant, you would say, ‘What the hell, give the guy a chance,’” even if the operation might be risky, he said. “But if I make an argument like that, I will be under pressure from all these other stakeholders who would penalize me.”

The number of organs being tossed out has also increased because of concerns that their imperfections could lead to bad outcomes. Last year, 3,159 donated kidneys were discarded, up 20 percent from 2007, according to federal data.

“To me, it just doesn’t make any sense,” said Howard Nathan, chief executive of a Gift of Life Donor Program based in Philadelphia. “We have hundreds of thousands of people on dialysis. And you have these kidneys available that would work … but transplant centers are afraid to use them because they might pull their results down.”

The trend also has a financial impact — not just on the patients, but on American taxpayers.

As federal regulators have noted, it costs the Medicare program more in the long run to keep patients with ailing kidneys on dialysis than to give them organ transplants. Transplant patients also tend to live longer and have a better quality of life.

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