Hospice providers are showing impressive scores on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ new Hospice Compare website — but those high grades have led some to question the site’s efficacy.
Hospice Compare, launched in mid-August, covers data from nearly 4,000 hospice providers on seven quality measures including patients’ beliefs and values addressed, pain assessments, patients treated with opioids who are given a bowel regimen, and treatment preferences.
CMS officials told reporters that they hope the site will open up a conversation between providers, patients and families.
More than three-quarters of the hospices with data on the site scored at least 91% on six of the seven measures, a recent Health Affairs report showed. That’s likely due to the time providers had to familiarize themselves on the measures, CMS officials said. They also noted that differentiation exists for lower-performing hospices.
Despite CMS’ assurances, the ratings should be taken “with a grain of salt,” Karl Steinberg, M.D., who works with the National Quality Forums on quality measures, told STAT.
Joanne Lynn, M.D., a geriatrician with the Altarum Institute, told Kaiser Health News that while it’s good that CMS is working on hospice quality, “at the present time, [the site] is of pretty limited value.”
Data from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems Hospice survey will be added to the site next year, as well as a new measure gauging the number of hospice visits when death is imminent. That measure is expected in late 2018.
Those should create more differentiation between providers, CMS officials said.
From the September 01, 2017 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
