Home Health Care Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) are the Home Health surveys that are sent to your patients that contain over 40 questions about the care that they have been provided by your organization. There are five different outcome measures that will be calculated in the outcome measure calculations for Value-Based Purchasing that are specifically related to HHCAHPS. Those five measures include personal care, communication, team discussion, overall rating of the agency by the patient, and the patient’s willingness to recommend the agency. The last two of these five measures only contain one question each. The others contain between four and seven questions.
One of the first places to look to determine where you currently stand with the HHCAHPS survey results is the Care Compare website. Just last week, the HHCAHPS star ratings and outcome measure calculations were published for the most recent period of data. By looking at your results on the Care Compare site, you will be able to determine weaknesses, if you have any, in the individual measure calculations of the HHCAHPS surveys. Those results are where you would want to begin with for determining education and focus needed to improve your results from HHCAHPS.
If you determined that you are weak in some or all areas, what do you do now? Don’t drag all your staff into a room and try to go through 40 questions on a questionnaire all in one in-service. Instead, break it down by outcome measure and look specifically at the questions from the questionnaire that are going to be utilized in the calculation of that individual measure. The next in-service should look at the next measure, and so on. Unless your field staff, or any staff member within your organization, is aware of the questions on this questionnaire, they should not be expected to get a positive result, not knowing what the questions are? It is important that you bring any staff member in your organization who interacts with patients together to go through the survey. Help them understand the questions that your patients are going to be asked and how they can positively impact the results.
Those five measures that will be used in the calculation of the Value-Based Purchasing Total Performance Score (TPS) make up 30% of your total score. It is essential that your field staff understand the impact that these questions and outcome measures have and that you have helped instruct them on what they can do with their patients to get a positive result.
We are very thankful that you continue to take care of patients in these challenging times, including staffing shortages that have recently begun to snowball.
If you need anything or have any questions, feel free to contact us. We are always happy to help.