The National Quality Forum (NQF) has announced a plan to begin reviewing prospective health measures that are under consideration by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Many of the standards in question concern the quality of home health and hospice programs across the nation.
The committee responsible for reviewing these measures is comprised of 150 health care leaders and experts. This committee, named the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP), aims to establish and enforce gold-standard performance measures for federal health programs.
NQF President and CEO Christine K. Cassel further discusses this topic:
“MAP convenes stakeholders from across the health care continuum to come to consensus on how to best measure quality for federal health programs,” NQF President and CEO Christine K. Cassel said in a prepared statement. “Their recommendations inform future [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] rule making focused on programs integral to improving the quality of care that patients receive.”
Home health measures under consideration include four relating to the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act), which requires long-term hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies to report standardized patient assessment data.
These IMPACT-related measures include the preventable 30-day readmissions measure and the drug-regimen review conducted with follow-up for identified issues. The drug-regimen review looks at the percentage of home health care episodes in which a drug regimen review was at various points in time, such as at the resumption of care, with physician follow-up as needed.
Further comments from interested parties such as the National Association for Home Care & Hospice will be submitted to the committee for review before December 7.
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