National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Home Health Care — Additional Performance Measures 2008 

Approximately 9,024 agencies deliver home health care services to a variety of patients—those recently released from hospitals or nursing homes, patients who are disabled, the frail elderly, and chronically or terminally ill people in need of medical, nursing, or therapeutic treatment to help them with their daily activities. As in all areas of healthcare, a diverse mix of stakeholders—including consumers, purchasers, and providers—are concerned about the quality of care these patients receive. In 2005, the NQF endorsed 15 performance measures specific to home health quality, described in the report National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Home Health Care. As part of NQF’s ongoing measures maintenance process, these endorsed measures were reconsidered alongside the newly submitted candidate standards. Seven of those 15 measures were substantially revised based on user feedback over the years and were considered as new measures. Topic areas include patient experience of care, immunization, medication management, pain management, fall prevention, depression screening/intervention, care coordination, risk assessment, heart failure, and diabetes. A total of 57 consensus standards ultimately were identified and evaluated by the Home Health Steering Committee for appropriateness as voluntary consensus standards for accountability and public reporting, and 24 were endorsed and are presented in this report.