Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that starting on July 27 the Quality Measure (QM) component of the Five-Star Rating System will reflect five of the six new QMs that are currently featured on Nursing Home Compare (NHC). You will recall, the agency announced in March that this change was going to happen in July. For a summary of that presentation and a list of the six new measures, click here.
CMS also announced today that it has posted an updated Technical User’s Guide on its website here. On the second page of the guide, there is a short list of the overall changes you can expect. Below are the key changes outlined in the guide:
- The five new QMs will be phased in between July 2016 and January 2017.
- In July 2016, they will have 50 percent of the weight of the current measures.
- In January 2017, they will have the same weight as the current measures.
- The methodological changes that will be introduced in July include:
- Using four quarters of data rather than three for determining QM ratings.
- Reducing the minimum denominator for all measures (short-stay, long-stay, and claims-based) to 20 summed across four quarters.
- Revising the imputation methodology for QMs with low denominators meeting specific criteria. A facility’s own available data will be used and the state average will be used to reach the minimum denominator.
- Using national cut points for assigning points for the ADL QM rather than state-specific thresholds.
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