Home Health Agency and Hospice Utilization

Home Health Agencies (HHA) provide at home skilled nursing, personal care and therapeutic services. Hospices provide palliative care and alleviate the physical, emotional, social and spiritual discomforts of an individual who is experiencing the last phases of life due to the existence of a terminal disease. In addition, hospices provide supportive care for the primary care giver and the family of the hospice patient.

Home health agencies and hospices submit an annual utilization report to the Office every March 15 for the prior calendar year’s data. Beginning in 2002, home health agencies and hospices began submitting data to HCAI through an online reporting system. Once a report is submitted and meets edit criteria, it immediately becomes available to the public. After all individual home health agency and hospice reports are received and approved, HCAI creates the Home Health Agency/Hospice Data Set from which the following of products are produced.

Available Data Products

Complete Data Set

The complete Data Set of annual utilization data reported by home health agencies and hospices contains information on visits, services provided, and gross revenues. The documentation, including report forms, is available for each reporting year.

Important note about preliminary and final utilization data:

Starting with the 2005 annual utilization data file, there will be two phases of data released. The preliminary data file released in the spring will contain data that has passed the prescribed set of fatal errors in the SIERA system and was therefore accepted into HCAI. The second data file released in the fall will be the desk-audited data and is considered the final version of the annual utilization data file. Please note that this preliminary set of data will only be live and downloadable on the web page up and to the point that the final version is released and then the preliminary data file will be replaced by the final data file. The pivot tables will be created in the fall for the desk audited data.

View the Data on the Open Data Portal

Trends

The following trend reports, available for home health agencies only, provide longitudinal utilization information. These reports include information on the number of agencies and patients by ownership as well as the number of visits by principal diagnosis and payer source.

  • 1993-2001 Home Health Agencies Statewide Trend Report

Please contact SIERA-Utilization Support to request for the reports listed above.

Contact Us

Home Health Agencies and Hospices Utilization

For assistance with Home Health and Hospice Utilization data, contact us at utilization@hcai.ca.gov.

SIERA Support

  • Support Line: (916) 326-3854

Mailing Address

Department of Health Care Access and Information
Information Services Division
Utilization And Disclosure Reporting Section
2020 West El Camino Avenue, Suite 1100
Sacramento, CA 95833-6213