On September 30, CMS finalized discharge planning requirements of the long-awaited IMPACT Act of 2014. Among other requirements, the core component of the final rule mandates that hospitals share quality and resource use measures about skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals with patients and their families as part of the discharge planning process. Sharing quality information with patients and their families during the transition to the post-acute setting empowers them to make informed decisions about their care.
While many acute providers implemented steps to get ahead of the IMPACT Act over the last several years, some providers may remain paper-based, unprepared to integrate quality data into the patient decision-making process and comply with the recently finalized discharge planning requirements by CMS’s November 29 deadline. CarePort Guide – both as a standalone module or integrated with CarePort Care Management – helps provider organizations fulfill these requirements. CarePort maintains a national database of providers to display in CarePort Guide – including Medicare star ratings and additional quality and resource use measures – on every Medicare-certified post-acute care facility. Displayed as an interactive tool directly in CarePort Guide or printed as a list, this information enables patients and their families to be active participants in their post-acute care selection. Data captured by CarePort Guide today meets these IMPACT Act requirements, and we are expanding the breadth of those quality measures for future release.
The final rule also requires providers to document in the patient’s medical record that post-acute data on quality and resource use measures were shared with the patient during the discharge planning process. As a means of documentation, there are several options for CarePort customers:
- A complete list of post-acute options from CarePort Guide can be printed and uploaded into the patient medical record.
- Patient choice selections can automatically be added to Care Management using the integrated version.
- CarePort is currently working with clients on a beta option to share patient choice selections directly to the EHR.
If you are interested in participating in our beta program or would like to learn more about CarePort Guide, please contact us.
