CMS Prods Hospitals to Improve Discharge Info for Home Health, SNFs

McKnight’s Home Care | By JAMES M. BERKLAN
 
The home care community is supporting a special memo issued this week that draws attention to hospitals’ shortcomings in providing post-acute care providers with adequate discharge information.
 
Home health and nursing home providers too often have been receiving patients with conditions they are not properly prepared for, putting both care providers and patients at risk, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official said in a note to state survey agency directors.
“CMS has identified areas of concern related to missing or inaccurate patient information when a patient is discharged from a hospital,” wrote David R. Wright, the CMS director of the Quality, Safety & Oversight Group. 
 
“[Post-acute care] providers may not be equipped or trained to care for certain conditions that apply to patients whose information they were not previously informed of by the hospital and have accepted for transfer and admission,” the memo added. “Not only can this place the patient’s health at risk, it can also put the health and safety of other residents (in the patient’s home or in a SNF), as well as provider staff, at risk. These situations can cause avoidable readmissions, complications, and other adverse events.”
 
The National Association for Home Care & Hospice said it agrees with the memo.
 
“Lack of thorough information coming from acute care facilities to home health and hospice providers is a long-standing issue. As the memo points out, thorough and accurate information is essential to patient safety and quality of care,” NAHC Director of Home Health and Hospice Regulatory Affairs Kate Wehri told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse in a statement. “We believe that when it comes to serious mental illness (SMI), complex behavioral needs and/or substance use disorder (SUD) information, guidance around what should or should not be shared with the post-acute care provider may not be clear.”
 
Some specific “areas of concern” for CMS are “missing or inaccurate information” related to patients with serious mental illness, complex behavioral needs or substance abuse problems.
Underlying diagnoses related to mental illness or substance abuse sometimes have not been included, regulators found. In addition, there may be incomplete information passed along about specific treatments a hospital undertook, such as additional supervision needed during a patient’s stay…

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