Home Health Value-Based Purchasing

As part of CMS’s final rule for 2022, CMS is moving forward with its plan to expand the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model (HHVBP), with a payment adjustment capped at 5 percent. The first performance year for the expanded model is 2023, providing agencies a one-year pre-implementation period to prepare. HHVBP is a major step forward in value-based care and links reimbursement to the quality of care delivered.

The impact: There is now a 5 percent plus or minus rate adjustment based on the quality of care delivered starting in 2023 (with 2023 quality scores impacting payment rates starting in 2025). According to CMS, the model has resulted in an average 4.6 percent improvement in home health agencies’ quality scores as well as an average annual savings of $141 million to Medicare.

Your score is determined by the following factors:

• 35 percent of the quality score is based on OASIS accuracy.
• 35 percent of the score will be based on submitted claims for ED visits, as well as hospitalizations that occur within the first 60 days of a patient on service.
• 30 percent of the score will be based on the HH-CAHPS survey.

You can prepare for the transition to HHVBP with MedBridge’s expert-led educational resources. The courses included in this article will help boost OASIS accuracy, reduce readmissions, and elevate HH-CAHPS scores.

Based on your organization’s quality outcome metrics and performance improvement plans, use MedBridge to build and assign Knowledge Tracks based on the following goals:

• Increase OASIS accuracy for the items impacting total performance score with OASIS Boosters
• Reduce readmissions with the House Call podcast series
• Improve HH-CAHPS survey scores with HH-CAHPS Overview Training

Once you’ve determined where your agency would like to improve, you can build Knowledge Tracks to assign this content to your staff and track their progress.

To deliver this content to your staff, log into your MedBridge account and copy the relevant track names, descriptions, and section names into the Knowledge Track builder. Then, add the courses below by searching for the name of each course. For more information about building Knowledge Tracks, check out Getting Started With the MedBridge LMS.

Track Name: Home Health Value Based Purchasing Quality Improvement

Track Description: This training will help improve the quality of your care for items related to Value-Based Purchasing.

Section 1: HHVBP Overview Series

Section 2: OASIS-E Boosters

Section 3: House Call: Improving the Patient Experience and Reducing Readmissions

Section 4: HH-CAHPS Overview Course

Section 5: Customer Service Courses for Office Staff 

Section 6: Customer Service Courses for Clinicians