Fazzi Associates, Inc.

Answer: CMS said that they were going to do it and... 2009 will be the year. After years of development of the Home Health Care CAHPS® survey initiative, CMS is now preparing for the implementation of the standard home health satisfaction survey and reporting system. Following a field test by AHRQ earlier this year, a final survey has been submitted to CMS for final review and approval. It is expected to go into effect in the third quarter of 2009.

Every home care agency in the country will be required to use the same questions in their patient satisfaction survey and they will be required to provide survey responses to CMS much like you do with your OASIS data. Click here to access the draft version of the survey from the RTI.org website.

All major patient satisfaction vendors, including Fazzi Associates and Press Ganey, are closely watching the developments and will be initiating action plans for their clients and for future clients. Here is the present status of CMS's effort and Fazzi's present action plan.

CAHPS® Development	Fazzi's CAHPS® Action Plan
A standard Home Health Care CAHPS® survey will be available in spring 2009.	Fazzi will convert client's current survey to new CAHPS® survey as soon as the final survey has been announced. All Fazzi clients will be operational - Day One.
Agencies can voluntarily participate in the national implementation of the Home Health Care CAHPS® survey in summer 2009 using an approved vendor. If you are interested in participating, you may register here.	Fazzi's automated reporting system will be ready to accept new survey results and transmit results to CMS - Day One.
Early 2009, specific vendors will be approved by CMS to submit agencies' results to CMS. Agencies will choose their vendor.	Fazzi expects to be in the first group approved.
Home Health Agencies will be able to decide on the method of survey administration: including mailed surveys, phone surveys, or mailed surveys with phone follow up.	Fazzi will provide its clients with both traditional mail survey service and a new phone survey service. Both options will be available - Day One.
Once an agency has reported 4 quarters of patient satisfaction results, their results will be publically reported.	Fazzi will provide best practice trainings, new reports and consultative sessions to help our clients reach/maintain best practice status. Schedule starts Day One.
Patient Satisfaction could be included in the 2010 pay-for-reporting requirements. This would require an agency to report OASIS and patient satisfaction results to receive the full market basket update.	Fazzi will provide its clients with the means to automatically complete and file all required reports in real time - Day One.

The movement toward standardized reporting for patient satisfaction has been expected and is long overdue. Most agencies have long recognized that patients' perception of care is an important measure of quality. If fact, most agencies recognize that it is the patients' perception of care that will most likely lead a patient or family member to recommend an agency to others or to complain about the agency to their family, friends, physicians and referral sources.