Aug
Do You Know How Many HHCAHPS Stars You Have?
jerry9789 0 comments Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
What Is The HHCAHPS Stars Ratings?
Is your home health agency delivering not just acceptable but high-quality care according to your patients? Are your staff effectively communicating and connecting with your clients? How do you compare to other home health agencies in your area? But more importantly, do you know how many HHCAHPS Stars you have?
In line with the Affordable Care Act’s goal for transparent and easily understandable public reporting of quality of care information, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) uses a 5-star scale rating with the Home Health Care Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) survey. The first national, standardized, and publicly reported home health care patient survey, the 34-item HHCAHPS survey was specifically designed to measure the experiences of people getting home health care from Medicare and Medicaid-certified HHAs. It gathers feedback from current or recently discharged patients as well as their family or friends about their experience with an HHA. The HHCAHPS survey is conducted by approved survey vendors either by mail only, telephone only, or a mix of mail survey with a telephone follow-up for non-respondents. And to support internal customer service and quality-related efforts, the survey also allows HHAs to add their own customized questions after the core questions.
HHAs with at least 40 completed HHCAHPS surveys over the publicly reported four-quarter period are qualified to receive HHCAHPS Star Ratings. Those with fewer than 40 completed HHCAHPS surveys will not receive Star Ratings as they may not have sufficient statistical reliability to ensure true performance is measured; however, if they’re eligible to be reported during that time period, their individual HHCAHPS measure scores will still be publicly reported.
The HHCAHPS Star Ratings at the Home Health Compare make it easier for consumers to compare home health agencies (HHA) and make informed decisions when choosing their home health care provider. While the HHCAHPS Star Ratings do not impact an HHA’s Annual Payment Update (APU), the CMS believes that the HHCAHPS Star Ratings “will stimulate improvements in the quality of care delivered and provide incentives for HHAs to maintain or improve their own quality.”
Image: Kampus Production
What Do The HHCAHPS Stars Ratings Measure?
The HHCAHPS Star Ratings are applied to each of the three publicly reported composite measures, from which specific questions from the survey are based, namely Care of Patients, Communication Between Providers and Patients, and Specific Care Issues. A Star Rating is also applied to the HHCAHPS global item, Overall Rating of Care.
On the other hand, an HHCAHPS Star Rating is not applied to the publicly reported Willingness to Recommend measure, as it mirrors the data in the Overall Rating of Care. CMS has found the Overall Rating of Care measure to be more stable.
To calculate the HHCAHPS Star Ratings, the responses to the survey items are first combined and converted to a 0-100 linear score and then adjusted for the effects of patient mix. To generate this adjustment, the CMS applies the patient-mix adjustment to quarterly HHCAHPS scores to account for certain patient subgroups that tend to respond more positively or negatively to the survey. The four-quarter averages of HHCAHPS linear scores are then rounded to whole integers using standard rounding rules.
Once the scores are linearized, adjusted and rounded, CMS assigns 1 to 5 stars for each HHCAHPS measure by applying statistical methods that analyze the relative distribution. The Star Rating for each of the four measures is then determined by the application of a clustering algorithm to the individual measure scores across HHAs.
The four HHCAHPS Star Ratings are then combined as a simple average to form the HHCAHPS Survey Summary Star Rating.
While more stars would mean a better home health care experience, a 1-star rating doesn’t necessarily translate to receiving poor home care from an HHA. This may mean that HHAs that received 2 or more stars delivered a better home health care experience on this particular measure.
An HHA that doesn’t have an HHCAHPS Survey Summary Star Rating means that they didn’t have enough surveys to allow star ratings to be meaningfully calculated, not that there is something wrong with the agency.
Image: Antoni Shkraba Studio
How Cascade Strategies Can Help Your HHA With Your HHCAHPS Star Ratings
As we’ve touched on earlier, you can find your HHCAHPS Star Ratings at the Home Health Compare. This user-friendly web tool allows one to select multiple HHAs at a time to compare the clinical quality of care provided and patient experiences at these agencies.
Are you happy with your HHA’s HHCAHPS Star Ratings? If you think your HHA can do a better job in getting more stars but need help formulating a gameplan, consider partnering with Cascade Strategies. In addition to being an approved HHCAHPS survey vendor, Cascade Strategies brings over thirty years of high quality market research experience to the table. For starters, we can help your HHA come up with the customized questions you can add after the core questions in your HHCAHPS survey. Using the insights we can derive from the responses to these customized questions, we can help your HHA identify areas of improvement and figure out what steps you can take to achieve your goals. To learn more about how we can help your HHA and your HHCAHPS Star Ratings, please contact us here.
Additional Reading:
How Researchers Are Helping Home Health Agencies with HHCAHPS Surveys
Featured Image: Tima Miroshnichenko
Top Image: Antoni Shkraba Studio
May
How Researchers Are Helping Home Health Agencies with HHCAHPS Surveys
jerry9789 0 comments Burning Questions
What Are Home Health Services?
The American adult population aged 65 and older is projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050, translating to an unprecedented 47% growth. From a 17% share of the total US population, this age group’s portion is estimated to grow to 23%.
And an aging population means more elderly adults looking to remain independent at home, in spite of the risks of various chronic conditions as well as unexpected mishaps like losing one’s balance and stumbling or falling. This is where home health services come in. Fast becoming a staple of the healthcare system, Medicare and Medicaid-certified home health agencies aim to provide “acute, chronic, and rehabilitative care from skilled and knowledgeable interdisciplinary clinical teams” while supporting elderly adults’ preferences to remain at home.
Home health services are forecasted to grow from a $100 billion to a $200 billion industry by 2028. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) pay for the majority of home health services costs, as Medicaid and Medicare make up over 60% of the US home healthcare expenses. To better evaluate, understand and improve the patient experience with home health services, the CMS has administered a survey collecting feedback from patients or their families about their skilled home care experience.
Copyright: Andrea Piacquadio
What Is A Home Health Care CAHPS Survey?
The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) is a program developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as requested by the CMS, which uses standardized surveys for gathering and analyzing information about patients’ experiences with healthcare services, including home health agencies. Unlike customer satisfaction surveys, CAHPS surveys focus on the patient’s experience and/or perception rather than their satisfaction with the care they’ve received. The program’s goals include the improvement of the scientific understanding of patient experience and the provision of tools for organizations to improve quality of care. The CMS publicly reports its patient experience survey results, with some surveys affecting payments to providers.
The Home Health Care CAHPS Survey (HHCAHPS), specifically, was designed to measure the experiences of people getting home health care from Medicare and Medicaid-certified home health care agencies. The first national, standardized, and publicly reported survey of home health care patients’ perspectives on their skilled home care, the HHCAHPS survey asks patients and/or their families about their experiences regarding communication between them and their providers, specific care issues, rating of care provided by the agency, and their willingness to recommend the agency to friends and family. An HHCAHPS survey is conducted by approved survey vendors through three modes: mail only, telephone only, or a mix of mail survey with a telephone follow-up for non-respondents.
The HHCAHPS survey was implemented nationally in October 2009 with home health agencies participating on a voluntary basis before quality reporting requirements for the home health annual payment update (APU) started in the third quarter of 2010. At present, the CMS requires all home health agencies receiving Medicare or Medicaid payments for serving 60 or more survey-eligible patients annually to contract with an approved HHCAHPS Survey vendor to administer the survey on a monthly basis. (Agencies serving 59 or fewer patients may apply for an exemption from the survey requirement.) The survey data is then submitted to the HHCAHPS Data Center on a quarterly basis with public reporting of survey results reflected at Home Health Compare.
Copyright: Kampus Production
What Benefits do the HHCAHPS Surveys Provide?
The HHCAHPS surveys have three broad goals:
-
-
- Produce comparable data based on patients’ experiences for objective comparisons between home health agencies
- Improve the public accountability of home health agencies with the care and service they provide
- Incentivize home health agencies to continually improve their quality of care.
-
It’s easy to think that HHCAHPS surveys influence the public reputation of a home health agency as well as the payment they could collect from the CMS. However, that view reduces the survey to the realm of “customer satisfaction,” with its attendant reliance on things like 1-to-5 scales. But instead of a pure “customer satisfaction” framework, the information gathered from HHCAHPS surveys comes from a person-centered viewpoint based on the patient’s perception of experience with the home health agency. This is accomplished through the use of core questions like does the agency effectively explain things to the patient in a way they understand, or do their personnel show a high level of professionalism or respect toward the patient. Framing questions this way lays a solid groundwork for comparing agencies.
HHCAHPS surveys can also effectively identify servicing gaps and suggest creative solutions in the delivery of home health care services. Such insights can lead to better financial outcomes for providers, since the CMS is providing incentives for higher levels of care, rather than paying the same rate for all, regardless of the patients’ perception of performance.
Why Use Cascade Strategies for Your HHCAHPS Surveys?
Cascade Strategies has over three decades of experience serving the health care industry. Our experience and expertise will help transform the information collected from your survey results into actionable insights, elevating the level of home health service and care you provide to make you stand out from the other agencies in addition to maximizing your financial gains from the CMS. Please visit our page describing our HHCAHPS Survey Services here, and let us know how we can help you. Also feel free to ask us questions using our contact form.
Copyright: Antoni Shkraba Studio
Featured and Top Image Copyrights: Andrea Piacquadio
info@cascadestrategies.com
2032 Newport Way NW,
Issaquah, WA 98027
(425) 677-7430