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The Maryland Quality Reporting website includes measures that provide a way to evaluate how well Maryland Home Health Agencies give care to patients:  

  1. Quality of Patient Care Star Rating that indicate how well Maryland HHAs give care to patients
  2. Quality measures that evaluate the way care is given (process) and the results of care (outcome)
  3. Patient Survey Star Ratings that indicate how satisfied patients are with the care they receive from Maryland HHAs
  4. Patient Satisfaction measures, or how well the patient rated the care they received

Quality of Patient Care Star Rating

The Centers for Medicare and  Medicaid Services (CMS) provides quarterly Quality of Patient Care Star ratings for each Home Health Agency.  The star rating summarizes some of the key measures of provider performance to improve consumer health care decision making. 

Quality Measures show four categories of skilled home health care most commonly used by patients, with a total of 13 measures. Each of the categories are listed below with an example:
  • Managing Daily Activities – “how often patients got better at walking or moving around”
  • Treating Symptoms – “how often the patient's breathing improved”
  • Preventing Harm - “how often the home health team taught patients or their family caregivers about their drugs”
  • Preventing Unplanned Hospital Care - “how often home health patients had to be admitted to the hospital”
 
CMS requires Medicare-certified Home Health Agencies (HHAs) to collect and report on many aspects of care in the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS). OASIS data are used by CMS to calculate the Home Health Quality Measures that are reported in the Maryland Quality Reporting website.  


   

Patient Survey Star Rating captures patient experience of care and is based on data collected from the Home Health Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) survey. The Patient Survey star rating is the average of four other HHCAHPS star ratings. Three of the star ratings are groups of conceptually congruent questions (composite) that assess the Care of Patients, Communication Between Providers and Patients and Specific Care Issues. The fourth star rating is a measure of the Overall Rating of Care.

Patient Satisfaction Measures

Consumers seeking services from a home health agency can review how patients and families rated the care received through the results of the Home Health Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS®) survey. 

HHCAHPS® reports two overall measures: 
  • Overall Rating of Care – the percent of patients who gave a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest)
  • Likelihood to Recommend – the percent of patients reporting YES, they would definitely recommend the HHA to friends and family
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HHCAHPS® also reports three composites (a composite is a single score calculated from several questions that measure the same concept). The composites are: 
  • How often the home health team gave care in a professional way (four questions) 
  • How well home health team communicated with patients and family (six questions) 
  • How often specific care discussed medications, pain, and home safety (seven questions)

Influenza Vaccination Rates of Home Health Agency Staff  

The Center for Quality Measurement and Reporting began collecting health care worker influenza vaccination data from Hospice and Home Health agencies during the 2021-2022 influenza season. Results are publicly reported on the Maryland Quality Reports website.  

It is important that health care workers who provide care to people 65 years or older or those with medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, heart disease, or kidney disease get vaccinated against influenza, as advanced age and complicated medical conditions put a person at higher risk for influenza-related complications and death. The rates displayed report the percentage of staff working for the home health agency that are vaccinated against influenza compared to the statewide average (the percentage of staff vaccinated in all Maryland home health agencies).  

To find the quality measures for any Maryland home health agency, or to compare up to five home health agencies, go to the Home Health Agency section of the Maryland Quality Reporting website.

Home Health Agency Utilization Tables, FY2019

View home health agency clients' utilization rates by race/ethnicity, age, gender, geographic region and jurisdiction of residence for the most recent survey year.

FY2019 Race/Ethnicity, Age and Gender Utilization Tables  

Last Updated: 8/15/2022