Changes to four quality measures (QM) that will impact the QM domain of the Five-Star Quality Rating System in the January 2025 refresh.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has updated the Five-Star Technical Users’ Guide, effective January 2025. This update includes changes to four quality measures (QM) that will impact the QM domain of the Five-Star Quality Rating System in the January 2025 Care Compare refresh. CMS will unfreeze four quality measures that were frozen beginning with the April 2024 refresh.
These measures include:
- Percentage of Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Residents Who Are at or Above an Expected Ability to Care for Themselves and Move Around at Discharge will replace Percentage of Residents Who Made Improvements in Function (short stay).
- Respecified – Percentage of Residents Whose Need for Help with Activities of Daily Living Has Increased (long-stay).
- Respecified – Percentage of Residents Whose Ability to Walk Independently Worsened (long-stay).
- Respecified- Percentage of Residents with Pressure Ulcers will replace Percentage of High-Risk Residents with Pressure Ulcers (long-stay).
To accommodate these changes in measure specifications, the scoring cut points for each of the four measures were recalculated to ensure an even distribution across scores. Additionally, to minimize potential disruptions, the QM rating cut points were adjusted to maintain the same overall distribution.
The Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Provider Preview Reports were updated in November and are available in iQIES. Providers can review their updated Five Star reports before the Care Compare refresh if they have not done so already. These reports contain provider performance scores for quality measures, which will be published on the Care Compare and Provider Data Catalog (PDC) during the January 2025 refresh.
The revised Five-Star Technical Users’ Guide may be found here.
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