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Masspro and its partners are spearheading performance improvement in the home health setting by facilitating quality initiatives, as well as data measurement and reporting. Through the national Home Health Quality Initiative (HHQI) funded by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), home health agencies (HHA) across the country will focus on improving acute care hospitalization (ACH) rates, integrating health information technology and treatment, redesigning care processes and systems, and transforming organizational culture. Agencies will utilize the Outcome-Based Quality Improvement (OBQI) methodology to achieve improvement.

The prospective impact of the national Home Health Quality Initiative is staggering. It’s estimated that by achieving the national acute care hospitalization target rate of 29.20% by August 2007, the savings to the Medicare Trust Fund could be $1.68 billion. This figure is based on 81,318 fewer hospitalizations at an average cost of $3,506 per day and an average length of stay of 5.9 days¹.

Quality improvement also impacts interrelated areas that are essential to success:

• Clinical improvement and better quality of life for patient

• More efficient use of staff and other resources to realize cost savings and/or cost avoidance

• Increased employee satisfaction and retention

• Enhanced positioning for public reporting and market share

• Preparation for future pay-for-performance initiatives

• Adherence to standards and regulations

Specifically, Masspro will provide the following value-added services to home health agencies at no charge:

• Expertise and technical assistance regarding performance improvement, including assessment of plans of action (POA)

• Data reports to evaluate progress

• Educational meetings and teleconferences lead by subject-matter experts

• Interactive e-mail list to facilitate knowledge sharing

• Access to the OBQI Medicare Quality Improvement Community Web site, www.medqic.org, which includes tools and resources for the publicly reported measuresa discussion forum, updates, automated POA submission, and Web-based OBQI an e-training manual

¹Deitz, D., McGann, P., & Pamon, C. (2005 September). Task 1b: 2008- The Future is Now. Presentation given at the QualityNet Conference, Hunt Valley, MD.