The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hosted a Special Open Door Forum (SODF) on Thursday, May 7, 2015 about a new set of Star Ratings for the CMS Home Health Compare website. The title of the Special Open Door Forum is “All About Home Health Patient Survey (HHCAHPS) Star Ratings.” Review the materials or listen to the recording to learn more about how CMS plans to use Home Health CAHPS survey results to create Patient Survey Star Ratings for the Home Health Compare website.

CMS plans to publicly report the (HHCAHPS) Patient Survey Star Ratings on Home Health Compare on www.medicare.gov starting in January 2016. The Patient Survey Star Ratings are in addition to the Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings which will start in July 2015.

This SODF described the rationale and overview of the HHCAHPS Patient Survey Star Ratings. It gave a detailed description of the methods for calculating the ratings and assigning stars. The SODF PowerPoint Slides, Technical Paper, and FAQs can be found on these websites:
http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQIHomeHealthStarRatings.html
https://homehealthcahps.org

A transcript and audio recording of this Special ODF will be posted to the Special Open Door Forum website at http://www.cms.gov/OpenDoorForums/05_ODF_SpecialODF.asp for downloading.