New CMS Resources Available: Job Aids 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering companion job aids to assist providers in the assessment and coding of Job Aids – GG0130A. Eating, GG0130B. Oral Hygiene, GG0130C. Toileting Hygiene, GG0130E. Shower/Bathe Self, GG0130F. Upper Body Dressing, GG0130G. Lower Body Dressing, and GG0130H. Putting On/Taking Off Footwear. The job aids provide clinically relevant information to assist providers in understanding specific guidelines and clinical considerations that should be applied to coding GG0130. Self-Care items. These training assets are intended for the following post-acute care (PAC) settings: Home Health Agencies (HHAs), Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (IRFs), Long-Term Care Facilities (LTCHs), and Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs). The training materials are available under the Downloads section of the Quality Reporting Program (QRP) Training page for each setting:

• Home Health QRP Training
• Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility QRP Training
• Long-Term Care Hospital QRP Training
• Skilled Nursing Facility QRP Training

If you have questions about accessing the resources or feedback regarding the trainings, please email the PAC Training mailbox ([email protected]). Content-related questions should be submitted to the setting specific help desk:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Alerts on Aromatherapy Spray, Probiotic Products, and Supplements

Federal agencies have recently issued important alerts or advisories about the safety or deceptive marketing of several complementary health products.

• An aromatherapy spray product has been linked to cases of a serious infection (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
• A probiotic product intended for infants has been recalled because of possible bacterial contamination (Food and Drug Administration).
• Dietary supplements promoted as treatments for pain and other aging-related conditions were deceptively marketed (Federal Trade Commission).
• Products promoted as cures for Alzheimer’s disease were marketed with false and unapproved claims (Food and Drug Administration).

WHY HEALTH-CARE WORKERS ARE QUITTING IN DROVES

About one in five health-care workers has left medicine since the pandemic started. This is their story—and the story of those left behind.

The Atlantic / By Ed Yong

The moment that broke Cassie Alexander came nine months into the pandemic. As an intensive-care-unit nurse of 14 years, Alexander had seen plenty of “Hellraiser stuff,” she told me. But when COVID-19 hit her Bay Area hospital, she witnessed “death on a scale I had never seen before.”

Last December, at the height of the winter surge, she cared for a patient who had caught the coronavirus after being pressured into a Thanksgiving dinner. Their lungs were so ruined that only a hand-pumped ventilation bag could supply enough oxygen. Alexander squeezed the bag every two seconds for 40 minutes straight to give the family time to say goodbye. Her hands cramped and blistered as the family screamed and prayed. When one of them said that a miracle might happen, Alexander found herself thinking, I am the miracle. I’m the only person keeping your loved one alive. (Cassie Alexander is a pseudonym that she has used when writing a book about these experiences. I agreed to use that pseudonym here.)

The senselessness of the death, and her guilt over her own resentment, messed her up. Weeks later, when the same family called to ask if the staff had really done everything they could, “it was like being punched in the gut,” she told me. She had given everything—to that patient, and to the stream of others who had died in the same room. She felt like a stranger to herself, a commodity to her hospital, and an outsider to her own relatives, who downplayed the pandemic despite everything she told them. In April, she texted her friends: “Nothing like feeling strongly suicidal at a job where you’re supposed to be keeping people alive.” Shortly after, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and she left her job.

Since COVID-19 first pummeled the U.S., Americans have been told to flatten the curve lest hospitals be overwhelmed. But hospitals have been overwhelmed. The nation has avoided the most apocalyptic scenarios, such as ventilators running out by the thousands, but it’s still sleepwalked into repeated surges that have overrun the capacity of many hospitals, killed more than 762,000 people, and traumatized countless health-care workers. “It’s like it takes a piece of you every time you walk in,” says Ashley Harlow, a Virginia-based nurse practitioner who left her ICU after watching her grandmother Nellie die there in December. She and others have gotten through the surges on adrenaline and camaraderie, only to realize, once the ICUs are empty, that so too are they.

Just Released: 2022 AHHQI Home Health Chartbook

Co-Sponsored by NAHC

The Alliance is excited to announce the 2021 AHHQI Home Health Chartbook is now available online! 

Released annually, the Chartbook, co-sponsored by the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), and compiled and charted by Avalere, summarizes and analyzes statistics on home health from a range of government sources. The Chartbook offers a glimpse of home health patients, the home health workforce, organizational trends, and the economic contribution of home health agencies. The Chartbook includes updated statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Medicare Cost Reports, Home Health Compare, Medicare fee-for-service claims, the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, and other data from CMS. 

This year's Chartbook features data from 2020 and includes clinical profiles of patients, workforce trends, and more. 

We would like to thank 2021 Chartbook sponsor NAHC for their continued support of the Alliance and the Chartbook. Learn more about NAHC at www.nahc.org.

A copy of the 2021 AHHQI Home Health Chartbook is available here. 

We are working on scheduling a webinar with the team from Avalere and our sponsors at NAHC, to answer questions and provide an in-depth analysis of the Chartbook. The webinar will be free and will be recorded for later use. Stay tuned for more information!

For more information on the Chartbook, please reach out to the Alliance's Executive Director, Jen Schiller, at [email protected] or (202) 239-3427.