The percentage of all live discharges from hospice that were followed by hospitalisation within two days, and where the patient also died during the inpatient hospitalisation stay.

The total number of live discharges from the hospice followed by a hospitalisation within two days of live discharge with death in the hospital within a reporting year.

Claims-based calculation details: Hospitalisations are found by looking at all Fee-for-Service Medicare inpatient claims; Consecutive and overlapping inpatient claims are combined to determine a full length of a single inpatient hospital stay (looking at the earliest from date and latest through date from a series of combined inpatient claims for a beneficiary); To be counted, the "from" date of the hospitalisation had to occur no more than two days after the date of hospice live discharge. From there, identify all beneficiaries whose date of death is listed as occurring during the dates of the hospitalisation.

For each hospice, divide the number of live discharges that are followed by a hospitalisation (within two days of hospice discharge) and then the patient dies in the hospital in a reporting period year by the number of live discharges in that same fiscal year.

The total number of all live discharges from the hospice within a reporting year. Claims-based calculation details: Live discharges occur when the patient discharge status code does not equal a value from the following list: "30", "40", "41", "42", "50", "51".

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Data Source: Hospice Medicare claims data. Data are obtained from provider submitted claims for the information needed to calculate the measure, so providers do not submit any additional data to CMS. CMS will use 2 years of Medicare claims data (8 quarters) to calculate the measure. The ten indicators contribute to the HCI score as follows: Each HCI indicator has its own numerator, denominator, and resulting indicator score. A hospice's given indicator score relative to an Index Earned Point Criterion determines whether the hospice earns a point for that indicator towards the full index score; Index Earned Point Criteria were set based on CMS' statistical analysis of national hospice performance to ensure meaningful distinction between hospices; Hospices' HCI scores are calculated as the total number of Index Earned Points across the ten indicators and can range from a perfect 10 to a 0. All hospices with at least 20 claims during the sample period have indicator scores calculated.

Public reporting.

Hospice Care Index Technical Report: www.cms.gov/files/document/hospice-care-index-hci-technical-reportjuly-2022.pdf. Date cited 12/10/23. CMS Current Measures: www.cms.gov/medicare/quality/hospice/current-measures. Date cited 12/10/23.

www.cms.gov/files/document/hqrp-qm-users-manual-v100oct2021.pdf

This measure is linked to the Hospice Care Index (HCI) measure.