Specific Care Issues Composite Measure

Identifying Attributes

Care Settings
Home Care
Country
United States of America
Publishing Organisation
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): Home Health Quality Reporting Program
Type of Quality Indicator
Outcome
IOM Quality Dimension
Person-Centredness
Domain
Consumer Experience

Defining Attributes

Definition

Score for the Specific Care Issues Composite = (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)/7 This composite is produced by combining responses to the seven questions below. • Question 3, "When you first started getting home health care from this agency, did someone from the agency talk with you about how to set up your home so you can move around safely?" • Question 4, "When you started getting home health care from this agency, did someone from the agency talk with you about all the prescription medicines you were taking?" • Question 5, "When you started getting home health care from this agency, did someone from the agency ask to see all the prescription and over-the-counter medicines you were taking?" • Question 10, "In the last 2 months of care, did you and a home health provider from this agency talk about pain?" • Question 12, "In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers from this agency talk with you about the purpose for taking your new or changed prescription medicines?" • Question 13, "In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers from the agency talk with you about when to take these medicines?" • Question 14, "In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers from this agency talk with you about the important side effects of these medicines?" Note that the response categories for all seven of these questions are "Yes" and "No." The scoring for this composite will represent the proportion of respondents who gave a Yes response to these questions.

Numerator

Calculate the proportion (P = X/Y) of cases in the quarter as follows: P1 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 3 is "Yes." P2 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 4 is "Yes." P3 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 5 is "Yes." P4 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 10 is "Yes." P5 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 12 is "Yes." P6 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 13 is "Yes." P7 = Proportion of respondents whose response to Question 14 is "Yes." The proportions for P1 through P7 are defined as follows: P = X/Y, where • The numerator X for each question in the composite is the number of respondents in the quarter who gave the most positive response to each question (that is, responded "Yes" to all of these questions). • The denominator Y for each question in the composite is the total number of respondents in the quarter who answered the question. Responses of "Do not remember" in Questions 3, 4, and 5 and "I did not take any new prescription medicines or change any medicines" in Questions 12, 13 and 14 should not be included in the denominators of those respective proportions.

Denominator

The denominator in this equation should include only those questions in the composite that had at least one non-missing response across the home health agency's respondents in the quarter. If a question was completely missing for all respondents in an home health agency in the quarter, then this equation does not include that question.

Exclusions

Patients under 18 years of age at any time during their stay, patients who died during the sample month, patients who received fewer than 2 visits from home health agency personnel during a 60-day look-back period, patients have been previously selected for the HHCAHPS sample during any month in the current quarter, patients who are currently receiving hospice, or are discharged to hospice, maternity only patients, no publicity status patients, and patients receiving only non-skilled (aide) care are excluded.

Use of Risk Adjustment
Yes
Risk Adjustments

The patient mix adjustment factors are derived from coefficients obtained from Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses on each separate HHCAHPS response item for the identified patient characteristics. They are calculated directly from these regression coefficients for each HHCAHPS response item by multiplying the coefficients by negative one (−1.0). Patient mix adjustment factors to account for home health agency differences in patient mix are calculated for the latest quarter and applied to home health agency raw scores for each of the latest quarter's HHCAHPS response items. The latest quarter's composite measures are then formed from these adjusted scores. The last four quarters of adjusted scores are then averaged to produce the current quarter's published scores. Published scores are adjusted for differences between an home health agency's patient composition according to the HHCAHPS patient mix characteristics and the overall national composition of home health patients on these same characteristics. Patient mix characteristics: non English survey response, age, education level, residence status (if living alone), self reported health status, mental/emotional status, diagnoses of schizophrenia or dementia/cerebral degeneration.

Stratifications

None

Data Attributes

Type of Data Collection
Surveys
Data Collection Methods

The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Home Health Care Survey is a standardised survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring home health patients perspectives on their home health care in Medicare-certified home health care agencies. Home health agencies must contract with an approved HHCAHPS Survey vendor and administer the survey on an ongoing (monthly) basis and submit HHCAHPS Survey data to the HHCAHPS Data Centre on a quarterly basis.

Frequency of Data Collection
Quarterly
Frequency of Data Collection in Days
91
Reporting Methods

Home Health Quality Reporting (CMS and providers) CMS Care Compare - Home health services and CMS Provider Compare (CMS, providers and publicly reported online). A score for the overall rating is based on survey data from four quarters, computed by averaging the results obtained from each of the four separate quarters.

Reporting Frequency
Quarterly
Reporting Frequency in Days
91
Indicator Has Recommended Targets
No

Source and Reference Attributes

Link to Measurement Tools
Quality Indicator Confirmed to be Part of a Program Used to Monitor Quality and Safety of Care Among Older People at a Population-Level between 2012-2022
Yes
Assessed by the Australian Consortium for Aged Care Collaborators as Generally Containing Good Properties (Importance and Scientific Acceptability)
Yes
Australian Consortium for Aged Care Endorsed
No
Identified by PHARMA-Care Project
No
Upload Date
12 March 2025