Home Health

Stratis Health supports Minnesota's home health agencies in their quality improvement efforts with links to a variety clinical quality and organizational improvement resources. Stratis Health works with the Minnesota HomeCare Association in pursuing joint opportunities to work together to support quality improvement in home care in Minnesota.

New Home Health Quality Initiative (HHQI) National Campaign

A new and enhanced HHQI National Campaign will launch on January 13, 2010. Home health agencies can participate in this free initiative designed to improve the quality of care home health patients receive as measured by a reduction in avoidable hospitalizations and improvement in the management of oral medications for home health patients.

Registration begins on January 13, 2010 at www.homehealthquality.org. If you register before January 20, 2010, you will be recognized as a National Campaign Premier Home Health Agency, and have access to an exclusive Premier logo and certificate. While registration will remain open throughout the campaign’s 18-month duration, we urge you to take advantage of these Premier incentives and join the movement early.

Some of the free resources that you will enjoy as a HHQI National Campaign participant include: 

• New multimedia Best Practice Intervention Packages (BPIPs) released every quarter to share effective quality improvement strategies.
• Quarterly data reports to track your agency’s progress.
• Access to Home Health STAR, a free target-setting tool at www.hhqi-star.org.
• Access to online communication tools created to share information with other providers.
• Additional cross-setting educational resources designed to unite providers from all settings under the shared vision of improved health care quality.

Statewide quality improvement

Since 2003, in its role as a Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO), Stratis Health has worked with Minnesota agencies statewide, providing training and resources on clinical quality and organizational improvement. Minnesota agencies can be especially proud of the 36 percent improvement in assessing clients for flu and pneumococcal immunizations. As of fall 2007, 86 percent of Minnesota Medicare certified home health agencies assess clients for vaccine status.

Since 2007 Stratis Health has supported agencies statewide in their participation in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign (HHQI). The campaign sought to unite the home care community under the shared vision of reducing avoidable hospitalizations to improve quality of patient care. Over 60 percent of Minnesota's agencies participated in the campaign. Stratis Health and the Minnesota HomeCare Association worked together to recruit agencies for the campaign and shared free monthly best practice intervention packages that included educational tools and resources and guidelines to assist agencies in reducing avoidable hospitalizations. Individual agency reports with actual and risk-adjusted hospitalization rates and characteristics of hospitalized patients were provided monthly, along with national and statewide ACH benchmarking based on CMS data.

Minnesota Home Health Collaborative

From August 2005 though July 2008, 62 Minnesota home health agencies participated in the Minnesota Home Health Collaborative, part of the national Home Health Quality Initiative supported by CMS. The initiative focused on publicly-reported quality measures selected by CMS, as significant indicators of an agency's quality of care. The collaborative was facilitated by Stratis Health and involved implementation of a variety of quality improvement activities and interventions and sharing of best practices with other home health agencies throughout Minnesota. Stratis Health supported collaborative members by providing quality improvement expertise, resources, practical individual assistance, and a variety of educational sessions focused on the measures. We supported efforts to improve Medicare quality measures, with special attention to reducing avoidable acute care hospitalizations (ACH); improving oral medication management; increasing influenza and pneumococcal assessment; and increasing utilization of telehealth technologies.

The 62 agencies that focused on reducing rehospitalizations and improving medication management achieved a 2.32 percent reduction in the ACH rate and a 6.20 percent improvement in the oral medication management rate. Stratis Health also offered agencies in the collaborative a pilot mentoring program, providing an opportunity for agencies to share their knowledge and improvement strategies with peers to help them improve their outcome rates for ACH and oral medication management. Collaborative members had the opportunity to share and network with other agencies in the state. Through participation in this effort, these agencies demonstrated their dedication to quality improvement and providing the best care for their clients. Stratis Health congratulates the agencies that worked so hard over the last three years to improve rates for the publicly-reported quality measures, acute care hospitalization and management of oral medications.

CMS provides information on the quality measures for every Medicare-certified home health agency in the United States. This information is available at: www.medicare.gov (select Compare Home Health Agencies in Your Area), or from its toll-free help line, 1-800- MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

Contact Stratis Health for assistance with your quality improvement and patient safety needs.

If your agency has projects it would like to work on, contact us to discuss how we can work together to support new initiatives.

Appeals information

Betsy Jeppesen, vice president, Program Integrity
952-853-8510

Home health resources