Improving Care for the Disadvantaged

Improving Home-Health Care Services CMS requires Home Health Agencies to develop and maintain programs that promote continuous quality improvement in caring for their patients. An integral part of this approach is the requirement that HHAs use a standard core assessment data set, OASIS, when evaluating patients. HHAs will be required to develop an Outcome-Based Quality Improvement program based on OASIS data analysis. Because no mechanism existed previously to provide support to the HHAs in developing and managing QI programs, CMS initiated a pilot project using the QIO program to facilitate implementing this system in HHAs. The Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care has led a five-state (Maryland, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia) pilot project to explore using the QIO program to help HHAs implement and maintain the OBQI system. Over 400 HHAs participated in the pilot (68% recruitment rate). The participating HHAs identified two outcomes to target for improvement. For the entire pilot, there was a 6.7% improvement in the risk-adjusted outcomes from year one to year two. Individual states ranged in improvement from 10.2% to 2.8%. The OBQI system is being implemented nationally through the QIOs.

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