CMS published your CY 2026 HHVBP Annual Performance Report in iQIES. The recalculation window closes September 4.

CMS published Preview Annual Performance Reports (Preview APRs) for the expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model in iQIES this August. Each report reflects your agency's performance during CY 2025 and includes the Annual Payment Percentage (APP) that will be applied to every Medicare fee-for-service claim with a through date in CY 2027. The recalculation window — the only formal mechanism to contest a calculation error in your Preview APR — closes September 4, 2026.

What's on the table: up to ±5% of every CY 2027 Medicare claim

The HHVBP payment adjustment ranges from −5% to +5% applied to your Medicare FFS home health payments for the entire CY 2027 payment year. The adjustment is not a lump-sum reconciliation — it is applied on each claim, to every 30-day period episode, throughout the year. For an agency with $2 million in annual Medicare FFS billings, the spread between a −5% and a +5% adjustment is $200,000 in annual revenue.

The CY 2026 APRs are the first Annual Performance Reports generated under the updated 10-measure set CMS introduced for the CY 2025 performance year. Scores from prior years — when the measure set carried different weights — do not translate directly to this year's number.

The three-stage APR process — and why the Preview window matters most

CMS issues APRs in three stages:

1. Preview APR — published now, available in iQIES. Includes your APP and measure-level performance data. Recalculation request deadline: September 4, 2026.
2. Preliminary APR — published October 1, 2026, incorporating any approved recalculation adjustments. Agencies that disagree with a recalculation decision have until October 16 to submit a reconsideration request.
3. Final APR — published November 2026. The APP in the Final APR is the number applied to CY 2027 claims. No further adjustment requests are accepted after finalization.

Recalculation requests are narrow in scope: they cover calculation errors CMS made in processing your submitted data — a wrong denominator, a miscounted episode, a misapplied exclusion. They do not cover errors in your original OASIS or claims submission, and they do not allow agencies to dispute clinical outcomes or documentation quality. But when a calculation error exists, the Preview window is the only opportunity to catch it before the APP locks.

What to review in iQIES before September 4

Log into iQIES, navigate to Home Health → HHVBP → Annual Performance Reports, and pull your Preview APR. Four items to cross-reference against your own records:

1. Total episode count. The denominators in your measure calculations determine how much each individual patient outcome moves your percentage score. If CMS's episode count is more than 2–3% below what your clinical records show for CY 2025 qualifying Medicare FFS admissions, investigate whether exclusions were applied correctly and whether any qualifying episodes were inadvertently dropped.
2. Discharge OASIS completion rate. OASIS-based outcome measures require a matched pair of admission and discharge assessments for each eligible patient. A missing or incomplete discharge OASIS removes that patient from the measure denominator — and a smaller denominator means individual patients move your percentage score by an outsized amount. Compare CMS's OASIS measure denominators to your own census count of Medicare FFS admissions with complete assessment pairs completed in CY 2025.
3. MSPB-PAC attribution. The Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary — Post-Acute Care measure captures 90 days of total Medicare spending beginning at the start of your episode. Verify that the patients attributed to your agency in the claims-based measure calculation are consistent with your admission records. Cross-agency care situations can affect attribution and are worth reviewing if your MSPB-PAC score is unexpectedly high.
4. HHCAHPS survey sample volume. CMS requires a minimum survey sample for the patient experience score to be included in your Total Performance Score. If your CY 2025 volume was near the threshold, confirm your survey sample count is correctly captured and the right response period was used.

What your agency should do before September 4

1. Pull the Preview APR from iQIES now and read the APP. The APP column is the number that becomes your 2027 payment adjustment on every Medicare FFS claim. Make sure your billing team and clinical leadership have both seen it.
2. Cross-reference your CY 2025 qualifying episode count. Your EMR should produce a count of Medicare FFS admissions with a through date in CY 2025. If the CMS denominator differs significantly from your internal count, that gap warrants investigation before the recalculation window closes.
3. If you find a calculation error, submit the recalculation request by September 4. CMS provides the recalculation form through iQIES. Document the specific discrepancy, attach your supporting data, and submit before the deadline. Late requests are not accepted regardless of the underlying error.

What we built for this

Carelytic's OASIS documentation workflow captures the functional status items on every qualifying admission and discharge assessment — the items that drive the OASIS-based HHVBP outcome measures. A complete, matched pair of admission and discharge OASIS records is what CMS uses to calculate outcome scores; a missing or incomplete discharge assessment creates a gap in the denominator. The Quality Metrics dashboard surfaces OASIS completion rates by clinician and caseload, so assessment gaps appear during the care period — not in August, when the Preview APR arrives and the recalculation window is already counting down.