Spanish Language Home Health Compare Tool Now Available Online

Spanish-Language Consumers Now Have Quality Data to Make Informed Home Health Care Decisions

Lumetra today announces the launch of a Spanish-language version of Home Health Compare, an online resource for consumers of home health care services originally unveiled in November 2003 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The original launch was part of the Home Health Quality Initiative, a CMS-backed effort aimed at improving the quality of care given to millions of Americans who use home health care services.

Estimates show that 2.5 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2002 received home health care services, including skilled nursing care, physical and occupational therapy, speech-language therapy, and medical social services provided in the comfort of home. Nearly 195,000 California residents received home health care in 2002. Currently, there are 650 home health agencies in California.

With this new tool, Spanish-language residents will have additional information to help make decisions about nearly 7,000 Medicare-certified home health agencies across the country, based on 10 different quality measurements, by visiting www.medicare.gov, clicking on "Español" in the upper right-hand corner and scrolling down to select Compare Home Health Agencies in Your Area, or calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

The 10 home health care quality measures provide information about how well home health agencies provide care for some of their patients on activities of daily living such as bathing, moving around, and better managing oral medications. Quality measurements also include better management of pain, for instance, so that pain does not hamper a home health care client's daily activities. CMS selects certain procedures or processes based on more than 40 Outcomes and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) measures that have been used by home health agencies since 1999.

Since 2002, Lumetra, Medicare's Quality Improvement Organization for California, has provided Outcomes-Based Quality Improvement (OBQI) training to more than 1,500 home health care professionals from 516 agencies throughout the state. These agencies serve approximately 86 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries who receive home health care. Agencies that received OBQI training from Lumetra showed greater improvement than those who did not receive the training.

In addition, Lumetra worked intensively with 283 agencies on one or more specific targeted quality measures (publicly or non-publicly reported). To date, two-thirds of these agencies have showed statistically significant improvement on at least one of their chosen target outcomes.

Over the next three years, Lumetra will continue its effort to improve home health care by focusing on the clinical areas of acute care hospitalization, dyspnea (difficulty in breathing), and increasing the use of telehealth technologies in the home health setting.

Quality measures are updated regularly and are calculated from data home health agencies report to CMS.

Lumetra is a San Francisco-based, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality, safety, and integrity of healthcare for providers and consumers. Lumetra provides innovation services and solutions in the areas of medical review, quality improvement, data analysis, and fraud detection and prevention. Since 1984, Lumetra has been contracted by CMS to be the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for California. For more information please visit Lumetra on the Web at www.lumetra.com.

Distributed by Market Wire