The Accreditation Commission for Health Care, Inc. (ACHC) has unveiled two new specialty credentials for organizations providing home-based care.

The North Carolina-based accreditor now offers a Distinction in Age-Friendly Care for Home Health and Hospice and the Distinction in Outcomes for Home Health, designed to recognize excellence in patient-centered care delivered in the home.

Recipients must be ACHC-accredited. For the accreditor these distinctions represent a starting point for additional versions that will stretch across the care continuum.

“Right now it’s home health and hospice, but if you’re a home health or hospice, you can also have a Palliative Care or Behavioral Health distinction,” Susan Mills, senior program director for home health and hospice at ACHC, told Hospice News. “Our plan is to roll it out across all settings, but our next step is home care.”

Recipients of home health and hospice distinction must demonstrate their ability to proactively ensure patient safety and provide goal-concordant care, in addition to implementing four evidence-based practices in geriatric care known as the “4Ms”: What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility.

The 4Ms framework is a component of the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative developed by The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the American Hospital Association and the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

“An agency must demonstrate that they have implemented evidence-based practices that promote patient-centered care based on the four M’s,” Mills said. “So when we go out and do the survey, they have to have implemented it in their training, their education to patients and family or patients and staff, and then it’s evident in their records or quality and in the care they’re providing.”

The Home Health Distinction in Outcomes is designed to recognize strong performance in three domains — patient outcomes, patient satisfaction and health care utilization. These metrics are rooted in the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model, which ranks providers by performance in peer cohorts based on aggregated Medicare claims and other data.

Those agencies that score in the top 25% of their cohort are eligible to receive the distinction.

The programs include a specialized geriatric assessment that focuses on the functional and psychosocial and their medical needs of an elderly person. Agencies must also have a focus on medication management that looks at polypharmacy risks that may affect mobility and mentation, as well as demonstrate effective care coordination. Some elements of the program are also designed to address social determinants of health.

“It also helps with a seamless transition across care settings, such as if they’re going to another into an age-friendly system, such as a hospital or a nursing home,” Mills said. “Also important is patient and family engagement, so they’re involved. It’s very patient-centered care.”