Hospice and Home Health Regulations Blog

A Simple Guide to Home Health CAHPS Survey

By now, I’m sure most home health agencies have heard about the HHCAHPS survey as required in the new HH PPS rules for 2010.  However, I have found that some agencies are not familiar with the changes CMS included in the final 2010 rules posted 11/10/2009. 

In this article, I’m going to tell you what you need to know in the simplest terms.

CAHPS is VOLUNTARY from October 2009 thru September 2010; the dry run data submission is required for the 3rd quarter of 2010 (July, Aug, Sept) and must be submitted to your HHCAHPS vendor by January 21, 2011.

Eligibility for a full 2010 annual payment update is dependent upon HHAs submitting data to their CAHPS vendor.  KEEP IN MIND… Agencies may choose not to participate in the survey if they believe the costs of participating will exceed the 2% reduction of the full annual payment update you would otherwise receive.

Providers with fewer than 60 eligible, unduplicated patients are exempt from the data collection from 3rd quarter 2010 thru 2nd quarter 2011.  (Each year, the unduplicated patient count from October 1 through Sept 30 (of a given year) will be used to determine HHCAHPS eligibility for the next year.)

By June 16, 2010, HHAs with less than 60 eligible patients must provide CMS with a patient count for the period of April 1, 2009 thru March 31, 2010.  CMS will post a form the HHAs will use to submit their patient counts via the www.homehealthcahps.org website.

HHAs certified on or after April 1, 2011 will be excluded from the HHCAHPS reporting requirement for 2012.

Data collection is limited to ONLY  Medicare and Medicaid patients.  You can ask your CAHPS vendor to survey other patients, but CMS only requires Medicare and Medicaid patients to be surveyed. (Original proposed rules also excluded patients 18 or older with less than 2 visits, maternity patients, hospice patients & those who have requested “no publicity status”.)

HHAs may submit v-codes for the diagnosis listing if the ICD-9 code is unavailable.  CMS does caution using a v-codes citing an example where the patients experience for rehabilitation from a knee surgery varies widely from one who is recovering from a stroke.  Using a v-code does not necessarily indicate the severity of the illness or condition.

CMS requests HHAs to target 300 HHCAHPS surveys to be completed annually; which means smaller agencies unable to complete 300 surveys would be surveying all eligible patients. 

Family or friends may help a patient answer the questions as a proxy, but the HHA staff cannot serve as proxy.

HHAs are urged to send patient lists to the CAHPS vendor within 21 days after the close of any month.

The survey is produced in English and Spanish only at this time, and no vendor is allowed to produce the survey in any other form.  Only CMS can produce additional survey languages, and they are working on a Chinese translation at this time.

Finally, CMS addressed the cost issue raised with implementing this required survey and their response is “shop around” and report your costs on the cost report.

I hope this helps you to get a better understanding of the CAHPS report.  For more detailed answers, visit the CAHPS website. www.homehealthcahps.org
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