You Asked: When will the updated Long-Stay Antipsychotic Measure be incorporated into Care Compare?
We Answered: CMS revised the original timeframe of October of this year to January of 2026. The QSO-25-20-NH memo was revised to reflect this new timeframe. CMS explains that the updated Long-Stay Antipsychotic Measure is being updated to include Medicare and Medicaid claims and encounter data, in addition to Minimum Data Set (MDS) data currently used in the existing measure. The national percentage of residents receiving an antipsychotic is 14.64% under the existing measure. Under the new measure, this will increase to 16.98% due to the new measure’s inclusion of additional data, resulting in improved accuracy. The updated measure will replace the current measure of the percent of long-stay residents receiving an antipsychotic medication. For star rating calculations, the cut points for this measure will be set to place providers into 10 equal deciles based on the distribution of providers’ performance. For additional information on how CMS calculates star ratings, see the Nursing Home Care Compare Five Star Technical Users’ Guide, found on the CMS Five-Star Quality Rating System webpage.