CMS recently finalized proposals for the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS), which can be viewed here, including updates for the Value Based Purchasing (VBP) program:
Please see the table below to see how the updated HCAHPS survey will impact VBP in the coming years.
- FFY20207 (CY2025 HCAHPS discharges)
- Responsiveness of Hospital Staff and Care Transition will stop being scored in VBP, as they were removed from the HCAHPS survey as of 12/31/24 discharges
- FFY2028 (CY2026 HCAHPS discharges)
- The Efficiency measure, Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary (MSPB) Hospital will be updated to account for readmissions and change the calculation of the measure.
- FFY2030 (CY2028 HCAHPS discharges)
- Three new HCAHPS survey dimensions will start being scored: Care Coordination, Restfulness of Hospital Environment, Cleanliness and Information about Symptoms, for nine scored dimensions.
- Another HCAHPS survey dimension will stop being scored: Cleanliness and Quietness of Hospital Environment, as the two questions that make up that dimension are scored under their new dimensions
- An Outcomes measure, Hospital-level Risk-Standardized Complication Rate (RSCR) Following Elective Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) and/or Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA), will be updated to include admission diagnoses and in-hospital comorbidity data from Medicare Part A claims.
Notes:
*Baseline periods would be CY2019 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
** “Responsiveness of Hospital Staff”won’t be scored for FY 2027 through FY 2029 program years, and an updated version of this dimension will be scored beginning with the FY 2030 program year
***“Cleanliness and Quietness of Hospital Environment” dimension won’t be scored beginning with the FY 2030 program year to align with the updates to the HCAHPS Survey measure that would move the “Quietness” question into the “Restfulness of Hospital Environment” dimension and would combine the “Cleanliness” question with the “Information about Symptoms” question to create the new “Cleanliness and Information about Symptoms” dimension
^“Care Coordination,” “Restfulness of Hospital Environment,” and “Cleanliness and Information about Symptoms” will be scored beginning with the FY 2030 program year
# “Care Transition” won’t be included in VBP beginning with FY 2027
Source: TABLE IX.B.2-03 from https://federalregister.gov/d/2024-17021
If you have more questions about this final rule, please reach out to our CAHPS® team at [email protected].
