Increase your physician referrals by marketing your CMS Home Health Compare scores. There is an excellent home health marketing tool available through CMS that many agencies are not utilizing. CMS’s Home Health Compare site provides potential patients and referring physicians with a published track record of how your agency’s performance stacks up to the competition. Physicians want to refer patients to proven home health agencies, so naturally promoting your above average compare scores is an excellent way to boost referrals.
The five quality measure questions under the quality of patient care category:
Managing daily activities
Managing pain and treating symptoms
Preventing harm
Preventing unplanned hospital care
Payment and value of care
Your agency may not excel in all measures, but you can highlight areas where you do excel and work on any areas where your team is falling behind the state and national averages.
Let’s look at the managing daily activities quality measure questions:
How often patients got better at walking or moving around? A score below 77% on this quality measure question is a good indication that your patients may not be getting an adequate amount of occupational or physical therapy. In addition, caregivers may need more education on the importance of getting the patient up more often. (National Average 77.7%) https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/About/Managing-Daily-Activities.html
How often patients got better at getting out of bed? A low score in this category is a red flag not only for potential patients using the home health compare site to find their care provider, but also for agency administrators. Nursing 101: non-ambulatory patients are at risk for many health complications. The National Average score on this question is 77.5%. Exceeding the national average in this category should be your goal. https://www.aota.org/Practice/Rehabilitation-Disability.aspx
How often patients got better at bathing? Mastering the activities of daily living (ADLs) is the mainstay of home health care. The score on this question should be in the 90% range. A lower score here may indicate the need to review your OT program including the assistive equipment you have available for patient use. (National Average 79.7%) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182013/
Let’s look at the managing pain and treating symptoms quality measure questions, and what a low score might indicate:
How often patients had less pain when moving around? The national average on this measure is 80.6% and your nurses and PTs should easily be able to outshine these results. A score below 80% may indicate a need to review pain management therapies. https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/guide/physical-therapy-and-back-pain
How often patients’ breathing improved? This can be a challenging measure in which to attain a high score. Patients with chronic illnesses such as COPD or CHF often experience breathing deterioration with disease progression. A score less than 79% may indicate a need for greater patient education. Patients with breathing difficulties often fail to follow prescribed medication instructions. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000009.htm
Measures no longer reflecting updated data after October 2019:
How often patients’ wounds improved or healed after an operation?
How often developed new or worsened pressure ulcer?
Reviewing your agency’s scores should be a routine part of your continuous improvement program. Superior patient care and satisfaction are both firm foundations to build your business on. Your above average scores can translate to referrals, and we offer a referral building tool to highlight them. Visit https://tagwebstore.com/ or call us at 866-232-6477 for more information on our Physician Outcome Brochures and take the next step in successful Home Health Physician marketing.
Resource: https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/search.html October 2019