Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials announced that six new quality categories and measures will be introduced to better indicate the services offered by nursing homes. These new measures will be added in April and will be scored according to a five star system.
McKnight’s discusses this further by listing the new measures.
Percentage of short-stay (stays of less than or equal to 100 days) residents who have had an outpatient emergency room visit (Medicare claims-based)
Percentage of short-stay residents who were successfully discharged to the community, and did not die or were readmitted to a hospital or skilled nursing facility within 30 days of discharge (Medicare claims-based)
Percentage of short-stay residents who were re-hospitalized after SNF admission, including observation stays (Medicare claims-based)
Percentage of short-stay residents who made made improvement in physical function and locomotion (MDS data-based)
Percentage of long-stay (stays of greater than or equal to 101 days) residents whose ability to move independently worsened (MDS-based)
Percentage of long-stay residents who received an anti-anxiety orhypnotic medication(MDS-based)
“We believe that these measures will be useful to consumers and to nursing homes as they provide important information about quality of care outcomes that we really haven’t been able to cover previously on Nursing Home Compare,” said Ed Mortimore, technical director of survey and certification at CMS, during the call.
The sixth measure will be left off of the five-star scaling system due to lack of an appropriate way to measure the rating with five stars.
Photo by European Parliament via Flickr CC License
