Attachment 2 - Summary of Changes to Instrument and Documentation 060909

Summary of Changes to Instrument and Documentation 060909

OMB, via CMS, forwarded the following requests and recommendations regarding the Home Health Pay for Performance Demonstration Evaluation Web-based survey instrument:

1.  Please add the PRA burden statement to the survey instrument.

2.  Regarding the second follow-up, we caution that if that initial response rate is low, it may not be the best to include the actual response rate in the letter. 

3.  Regarding questions 14, 15 and 16 – due to the availability of administrative data, we recommend removing these perception-based questions.

Response:

1. The PRA burden statement has been added as the first page of the Web-based survey. This change is displayed in the accompanying .pdf version of the Web-based survey instrument.

2. The wording describing the second follow-up has been changed to the following and can be found on pg. 6 of P4P – Part B_final_060909:

Second follow-up (within two working days after date specified in first follow-up)

Materials/Method:

Letter addressed by name to administrator or Director of Nursing from the CMS contractor (University of Colorado, Denver (Anschutz Medical Center)) with a request to complete the Web-based survey, the challenge to “be counted” as have many of their peers, and new date to complete of one week and three days.

3. We respectfully decline to implement the recommendation to remove items 14 – 16. Measuring management perceptions of the effect participation in the demonstration has on their agency’s financial bottom line, its patient outcomes, and the overall impact of the program is valuable in and of itself. These perceptions will be compared with an analytic evaluation of similar secondary data provided by CMS. The directions at the beginning of these items clearly indicate that we are interested in knowing their perceptions about these matters. We believe there will be value in the agencies responses to the items as presented.