New ranking system for SNF quality of care helps discharge planners and case managers guide patient decision-making during the discharge process
CarePort, powered by WellSky®, a market leader in care transitions, today announced the launch of the CarePort Quality Score, a new market-leading scoring system that summarizes the quality of care delivered by skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) for short-stay patients. Alongside the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Five-Star rating, this new score will be added to CarePort Guide and CarePort Insight to help discharge planners and case managers guide patient decision-making during the hospital discharge process.
Among the ~15,000 SNFs across the U.S., there is tremendous variance in the care provided to patients. While CMS produces an overall quality ranking for SNFs on Care Compare with its Five-Star rating, it largely focuses on custodial stay patients — meaning, patients that require assistance with their activities of daily living, such as eating and bathing. These patients have vastly different needs than short-stay patients seeking brief rehabilitative care before returning home.
To address this variance and provide specific, in-depth guidance for short-stay patients and their families, CarePort created the CarePort Quality Score, a ranking system that captures SNF quality and efficiency domains relevant to the short-stay patient population. Using real-time data, the CarePort Quality Score enables discharge planners to create a preferred network of SNFs based on facility performance and outcomes — such as average length of stay and rehospitalization rates — rather than metrics that measure the custodial population. Moreover, CarePort updates quality scores monthly, in contrast to other models that rely on claims data and are updated annually, to provide the most timely and accurate insights into a facility’s performance.
“Selecting the next phase of care following a hospital stay can be overwhelming for patients and their families, particularly when SNF quality of care can range considerably from facility to facility,” said Lissy Hu, M.D., CarePort CEO and founder. “The CarePort Quality Score offers short-stay patients and their loved ones, as well as case managers and discharge planners, a tool to help determine which facilities are better for a patient to recover based on the patient’s specific needs. By calculating these ratings with real-time data, we give up-to-date, clear insights into the quality of SNFs across the country, ensuring that short-stay patients receive the best care possible.”
Much like CMS’s Five-Star rating, CarePort’s ranking system uses stars to represent quality. Rankings are determined by ten key metrics including risk-adjusted 30-day rehospitalization rates, average length of stay for discharged patients, staffing, Medicare spending per beneficiary, and more. The ranking system is intended to help providers improve performance over time, offering the insights and guidance needed to make facility changes that benefit managed care populations.
To learn more about the CarePort Quality Score, please refer to this webinar. To learn more about how CarePort Insight and CarePort Guide can help your organization better place and coordinate care for patients, visit CarePort’s website.