Title 42 › CHAPTER 7 — SOCIAL SECURITY › SUBCHAPTER XVIII — HEALTH INSURANCE FOR AGED AND DISABLED › Part E — Miscellaneous Provisions › § 1395lll
Require the Health and Human Services Secretary to make post-acute care providers collect and share the same patient assessment data, quality measures, and resource-use measures. The goal is to make data standardized and easy to exchange so different providers can see a patient’s history and plan better care. The law covers four kinds of providers: home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and long-term care hospitals (except one special hospital type). It also names the assessment tools used by each kind of provider (for example, OASIS for home health and the resident assessment for skilled nursing). Providers must send standardized assessment data at admission and discharge. The data must include things like functional status (mobility and self-care), thinking and memory, special treatments (ventilator, dialysis, chemo), medical conditions and co‑morbidities, physical impairments (incontinence, hearing, vision, swallowing), and any other categories the Secretary requires. Where assessment data overlaps existing items, the Secretary must replace the old items with the new standardized ones. The Secretary must match claims data to assessment data when practical. The law says the data cannot be used to force a patient to use one specific type of post-acute provider to get paid care. Set deadlines for when different measures must start. Providers other than home health (skilled nursing, inpatient rehab, and long-term care hospitals) had many measures begin on October 1, 2016 or October 1, 2018 depending on the topic; home health agencies had later start dates, usually January 1, 2017 or January 1, 2019 depending on the topic. Specifically, for functional status and cognitive change: skilled nursing and inpatient rehab began October 1, 2016; long-term care hospitals October 1, 2018; home health January 1, 2019. For skin integrity: skilled nursing, inpatient rehab, and long-term care hospitals October 1, 2016; home health January 1, 2017. For medication reconciliation: home health January 1, 2017; the others October 1, 2018. For major falls: skilled nursing, inpatient rehab, and long-term care hospitals October 1, 2016; home health January 1, 2019. For communicating and transferring health information: skilled nursing, inpatient rehab, and long-term care hospitals October 1, 2018; home health January 1, 2019. Resource-use measures (including Medicare spending per beneficiary) began October 1, 2016 for the three non-home-health providers and January 1, 2017 for home health. Measures will be developed in three phases: specification (public details on how the measure works), data collection and analysis, then feedback to providers, and finally public reporting. The Secretary must give confidential feedback reports starting one year after the measure’s start date (at least quarterly when feasible), and must make provider performance public no later than two years after the measure’s start date, after letting providers review and correct their data. Measures must be risk adjusted and may be changed, added, suspended, or removed with public notice, though urgent safety concerns can be handled faster. The Secretary must write rules by January 1, 2016 to require that discharge planning use these measures and include patient preferences and goals. The law required $130,000,000 for carrying out these tasks, with 50% available on October 6, 2014, and the rest divided equally across fiscal years 2015 through 2019. Decisions about what exact data and measures to require are not subject to administrative or judicial review, and the Paperwork Reduction Act does not apply to these standardized assessments. The Secretary must take stakeholder input before the first rulemaking.
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The Public Health and Welfare, Source: USLM XML via OLRC
Legislative History
Reference
Citation
42 U.S.C. § 1395lll
Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare
Last Updated
Sep 22, 2026
Release point: 119-110