Examples of Home Health Care Quality Measures for Consumers

The development of measures for home health is in the early stages, but several measures have been endorsed by NQF and are being reported. Here are some examples of measures that would be appropriate for reporting to consumers and are currently included in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’) Home Health Compare Web site.

The list is categorized by the Institute of Medicine’s domains for a quality health care system; for definitions, go to The Six Domains of Health Care Quality. However, measures for home health currently focus on only three of the IOM categories; measures in development address additional areas, with an emphasis on patient-centeredness.

Patient Safety Measures:

• Percentage of patients needing emergent care for wound infections or deteriorating wound status.
• Percentage of patients who require emergent care from a hospital, doctor, or outpatient department/clinic for any type of emergency.

Effectiveness Measures:

• Percentage of patients showing improvement in, for example,
  • Ambulation/locomotion.
  • Bathing.
  • Management of oral medications.
  • Status of surgical wounds.
  • Urinary incontinence.

Patient-Centeredness Measures:

• Percentage of patients reporting that home health providers treated them as gently as possible.
• Percentage of patients reporting that home health providers talked with them about their medications and pain.

Efficiency Measures:

• Percentage of patients admitted or readmitted to an acute care hospital

Equity Measures:

None at this time for home health care.

Descriptive Measures:

While not associated with any particular IOM domain, descriptive measures can convey the home health agency’s capacity for providing quality of care and service. Examples include:

• Medicare-covered services offered by the agency.
• The ownership of the home health agency.
• When the agency was originally certified by Medicare as a home health provider.

Also in "Measures of Quality in Nursing Homes, Home Health Agencies, and Hospice"

• Home Health Care
  • Examples of Home Health Quality Measures for Consumers
  • Major Home Health Agency Measurement Sets
• Nursing Home Care
• Hospice Care