Patients may need to go into the hospital while they are getting home health care. Admission to hospital generally indicates a decline in patient health status. In some instances, this may not be avoidable even with good home health care. For instance, some illnesses are not curable and, over time, will make their health worse. For some patients, a readmission to the hospital may be a planned part of continuing treatment for their medical conditions.
However, some inpatient hospital care may be avoided if the home health clinical staff is doing a good job at checking the health condition of patients at each visit to detect problems early, including monitoring nutritional status, taking medicines correctly, and home safety. A national outcome-based quality improvement demonstration project showed that home health care agencies can, by improving the quality of care provided, substantially reduce the likelihood of hospitalization for many patients.
This is one of 41 OASIS-based measures for which Medicare-certified home health agencies receive performance reports from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The reports cover Medicare and Medicaid adult non-maternity patients and compare each agency's rates to national reference rates and to the agency's own rates in the previous year. The reports provide home health agencies with information they can use to improve quality of care by targeting care practices that influence specific patient functioning and health status, as part of a comprehensive quality improvement approach.
This measure is also one of ten Home Health Quality Initiative measures; a resource to help consumers compare home health agencies, and they are intended to motivate home health agencies to improve care and to inform discussions about quality between consumers and clinicians.
