CMS Releases Home Health Patient Experience of Care Star Ratings

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, released the Home Health Care Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HHCAHPS based on star ratings measurement to evaluate and rate patient’s interactions and experiences with home health agencies.

The public website is available at https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/search.html

Patients and their families or caregivers can rate an agency by giving it one to five stars. Five stars indicate the best patient experience. This site allows for the comparison between home health agencies.

The following criteria can be viewed:

• Care of Patients
• Communication Between Providers and Patients
• Specific Care Issues
• Overall Rating of Care Provided by the Home Health Agency
• Survey Summary star rating

While not all agencies have information on the site, more and more data is being input as the data base is built.

CMS also provides information on nursing homes, physicians, dialysis centers, and hospitals at the following links:

• Nursing Home Compare (https://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/search.html) features an overall star rating for each nursing home.
• Physician Compare (https://www.medicare.gov/physiciancompare/search.html) uses star ratings to display ratings for several meaningful measures for group practices.
• Dialysis Compare (https://www.medicare.gov/dialysisfacilitycompare/#search) uses star ratings to help make data on dialysis centers easier to understand and use.
• Hospital Compare (https://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html) uses star ratings to help consumers compare and choose among hospitals.