Dive Brief:
- The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is proposing revisions to the discharge planning requirements that hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and home health agencies are required to meet in order to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
- CMS' proposed rule includes the discharge planning requirements of the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act), which would require hospitals to provide patients with data on quality measures and resource use.
- The goal is to help patients plan their discharge process, while considering their goals and treatment preferences.
Dive Insight:
The proposed rule would require hospitals to consider how they will share data on post-acute care (PAC) providers with patients, ensure it is relevant to the patient's goals, and document the process. As noted by HealthITInteroperability, such a data sharing process could benefit from IT interoperability.
“We would also expect the hospital to document in the medical record that the PAC data on quality measures and resource use measures were shared with the patient and used to assist the patient during the discharge planning process,” the rule states.
Under the proposed rule's requirements, hospitals would have to:
- Develop a discharge plan within 24 hours of patient admission or registration;
- Provide instructions to those patients discharged to their home;
- Implement a medication reconciliation process;
- Send patients' medical information to any receiving facility; and
- Establish a process to follow up.