Situation Report | January 18, 2022
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently announced that the deadline for home health agencies to submit a request for an exemption from participating in the Home Health CAHPS (HH CAHPS) Survey for the CY 2023 Annual Payment Update (APU) is March 31, 2022.
Medicare-certified home health agencies are eligible for an exemption if they served 59 or fewer survey eligible patients between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021. If your agency is exempt, you do not need to participate in the HHCAHPS data collection period, which runs from April 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022.
To be exempted from participating in the HH CAHPS Survey for the CY 2023 APU, HHAs must count the number of home health patients they served between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, who meet HHCAHPS survey eligibility criteria and then report that count on the Participation Exemption Request Form. CMS notes, exemptions are active for one year only.