We always have something to truly be thankful for during this time of Thanksgiving, no matter how good or bad times may be here at Healthcare Provider Solutions, we are all thankful for you as healthcare providers for continuing to care for patients in these rocky times.
Home Health Baseline Year
There are two things to share regarding Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) in Home Health set to begin January 1, 2023. The first is that it has been finalized in the Home Health Final Rule 2023 that the baseline year for the model and for agencies will be 2022. In last year’s final rule, it had been finalized that the baseline year would be 2019 and they have now changed that to 2022. This should be beneficial for agencies because most would agree that agencies had better outcomes in 2019 compared to 2022. We want to use a year where outcomes were not so great so as to have opportunity for higher improvement scoring in 2023 and beyond.
Pre-Implementation Performance Reports (PIPR)
In addition, be aware that CMS has issued the Pre-Implementation Performance Reports (PIPR) and that each individual provider number has its own report. They have been uploaded into the iQIES System, where you obtain all Value-Based Purchasing reports, transmit OASIS to the database and collect your CASPER reports. Whoever is currently responsible for transmitting your OASIS or gathering CASPER reports should already have access to that system.
In that PIPR, agencies are compared to other agencies in your cohort with data through June 2022 for OASIS, and through March 2022 for HHCAHPS. It is valuable information as it tells you, by outcome measure, what percentile ranking you are in the nation. This provides information for you to have some idea if you will come out positive in the calculation of the percentage that will be taken from or added to your payments. You must be in at least the 51st percentile in order for your result under VBP to be positive. For outcome measures that are currently calculated at less than the 50th percentile, agencies should immediately begin focusing on how you can improve those scores.
The first official reports that we will receive for the Value-Based Purchasing model will not be until July 2023, so having this information from CMS provides some idea of where we stand as the implementation of VBP begins.
If you have any questions or need help with anything, please contact us. We are more than happy to help.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!