Announcement Regarding Hospice Participation in HHCAHPS
folder_openChanges to Protocols and Guidelines, Information for Home Health Agenciescalendar_todayPosted December 6, 2010

This announcement is to inform agencies that hospices (agencies that provide care only to hospice patients) are not required to participate in the Home Health Care CAHPS (HHCAHPS) Survey for the annual payment update. Some home health agencies serve both hospice and NON-hospice patients. In this case the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) assigns one CMS Certification Number (CCN) for the part of the agency that serves non-hospice patients and a different CCN for the hospice. Only the CCN that serves non-hospice patients is required to participate in the HHCAHPS Survey to receive the annual payment update.

In addition, patients who received skilled home health care during a sample month but who were discharged for hospice care are not eligible to participate in the HHCAHPS Survey. If your agency has provided monthly patient information files to your approved HHCAHPS Survey vendor for a hospice, and/or included information about patients discharged to hospice on a monthly patient information file that the vendor uses to sample and survey patients for the HHCAHPS Survey, please contact your approved HHCAHPS Survey vendor immediately.

HHCAHPS survey vendors should verify with their client agencies that the survey is not being conducted for hospice-only agencies and that agencies are excluding patients discharged to hospice from the monthly information files that they submit. Survey vendors must alert the HHCAHPS Coordination Team if they are currently collecting and/or have submitted an HHCAHPS data file for an agency that is a hospice.

Please contact the HHCAHPS Coordination Team via email at hhcahps@rti.org or by phone at 1-(866) 354-0985 if you have any questions about this announcement.