Results of Home Health Agency Patient Surveys Available to Medicare Recipients

Many seniors who require long-term care would rather remain at home than move to an assisted living or nursing facility; however, the selection of which company to hire for in-home assistance can be a difficult decision for family members to make.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) have prepared a national survey requesting that patients describe their experiences with certain Medicare-certified home health agencies, and these results are now available on the agency’s Quality Care Finder website.

www.medicare.gov/quality-care-finder

The survey asks patients questions such as:

  • Whether their home health team gave care in a professional way;
  • Whether their team communicated well with them in a courteous and respectful way;
  • Whether the team discussed medicines, pain, and home safety; and
  • Whether the patient would recommend the agency to friends and family.

The survey results, which resource will be updated every four months with new information, will supplement the information already available on the agency’s Home Health Compare website, located at http://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/search.aspx.

CMS has provided that the survey results were designed to create incentives for home health agencies to improve their quality of care, as well as to give patients additional information so they are aware of the types of care they will receive from various agencies.  The survey results will offer prospective patients, their families and caregivers the chance to compare home health agencies by reviewing such results.

The initial survey results cover the period from October 2010 to September 2011.  Currently, patients are generally giving their home health agencies favorable scores.  For example, 84 percent of patients gave their home health agency a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest), and 80 percent of patients said “yes, they would definitely recommend the home health agency to friends.”

For more information on the survey, visit https://homehealthcahps.org.