Frequently Asked Questions

There is no need for a release of information. If a member gives the plan the contact information for their PCP, the plan can share information with that PCP. Plans or other providers of LTSS should try to coordinate LTSS services with medical services, even if they are not the primary payer for medical services for the member. Plans that do not know the member’s PCP can/should ask the member to identify their PCP and request their contact information. The measure is intended to determine whether plans tried to connect with the medical care provider. There is an exclusion in this measure for members who refuse to have their care plan shared with the PCP, so if the member refuses, this should be documented, and such members are excluded from the measure rate.

No; discharges for planned hospital admissions are excluded from the measure denominator. Identify planned discharges using the value sets.

Yes, both the re-assessment and the care plan must include each of the nine specified core elements. The re-assessment and care plan must be done face-to-face unless there is documentation that the member refused a face-to-face encounter.

The denominator for the Reassessment/Care Plan Update after Inpatient Discharge measure is identified through administrative claims for inpatient discharges. Managed care plans that are not the primary payer for inpatient care, which is usually covered under a medical benefit, do not routinely have reliable access to administrative claims for inpatient stays to identify individuals who are eligible to be counted in the measure denominator. Therefore, the eligible population for this measure is restricted to individuals who receive both medical and LTSS benefits through the managed care plan providing MLTSS.

If MLTSS plans can obtain timely, complete, and accurate inpatient claims data for their members, then a state may choose to deviate from the measure specifications to require MLTSS plans not providing medical benefits report this measure. For example, because the timely transfer of information between hospitals and MLTSS plans is key to ensuring smooth transfers between settings of care, MLTSS plans may have access to hospital discharge data through state or regional health information exchanges. In some cases, MLTSS plans are working closely with hospitals to share timely information about admissions and discharges. In addition, some states have the data and capacity to construct this measure for MLTSS plans using Medicare claims data for Medicare- Medicaid dual eligible beneficiaries (see more information about state access to Medicare claims data).

A reassessment with the member after they have been discharged from an inpatient facility is required to determine whether a member has had a change (or no change) in their LTSS needs. Even if the reassessment conducted post-discharge finds no change in a member’s LTSS needs, the second rate for this measure (Reassessment and Care Plan Update after Inpatient Discharge), Managed Long Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) plan care managers should conduct a care plan update and document that they considered each of the nine core elements of the care plan, and determined that the plan of care for each element remains the same; documentation of “no changes” in the care plan as a whole does not meet the numerator criteria.

Use the most recently updated care plan.

There must be documentation of the refusal, which would result in exclusion from the measure. The rate of exclusion due to a member refusing to participate should be reported along with the measure performance rate.

The following measures assess institutional rebalancing and utilization:

• LTSS Admission to an Institution from the Community
• LTSS Minimizing Institutional Length of Stay
• LTSS Successful Transition after Long-Term Institutional Stay

Yes. Value sets are the complete set of procedure and codes used to identify a service or condition included in a measure. All three of the rebalancing measures—LTSS Admission to an Institution from the Community, LTSS Minimizing Institutional Length of Stay, and LTSS Successful Transition after Long-Term Institutional Stay—use the "Institutional Facility"value set. See Table 2 in the "LTSS Value Sets to Codes" tab. Table 1 in the "LTSS Measures to Value Sets" tab shows each value set needed for each measure.