What Your July 2026 IPR Is Really Telling You

As Clover Consulting launches our updated website and expands Clover Insights, we are starting with a report every home health leader should understand: the Interim Performance Report, or IPR.

The IPR should not be downloaded, briefly reviewed, and filed away. It is one of the strongest tools agencies have for identifying where performance is improving, where revenue may be at risk, and where clinical operations are not producing the intended outcomes.

The preliminary July 2026 IPR was released in iQIES on July 16, with the final report scheduled for August 18. This report uses the CY 2025 HHVBP measure set. Its OASIS-based measures include data through March 31, 2026, while the claims-based and HHCAHPS measures generally include data through December 31, 2025.

Here is what agencies should be looking for.

The Total Performance Score Does Not Tell the Whole Story

A Total Performance Score provides a useful summary, but leadership should not stop there.

The real findings are inside the individual measures, care points, measure weights, and cohort rankings. A relatively strong overall score can still conceal a serious weakness in a heavily weighted measure. Likewise, an agency with a modest score may have several measures moving in the right direction.

For agencies with sufficient data across all CY 2025 measure categories, Potentially Preventable Hospitalization accounts for 26% of the TPS, while Discharge Function Score accounts for 20%. Together, those two measures represent 46% of the score.

For agencies without applicable HHCAHPS data, the redistributed weights increase to approximately 37.14% for Potentially Preventable Hospitalization and 28.57% for Discharge Function Score. In that situation, the two measures represent nearly two-thirds of the agency’s TPS.

That is why agencies should prioritize findings according to their impact—not simply according to which percentage looks the worst.

Achievement and Improvement Tell Different Stories

The IPR evaluates agencies in two important ways:

Achievement points compare the agency’s performance with other agencies in its assigned volume-based cohort.

Improvement points compare the agency’s current performance with its own established baseline.

CMS uses the higher of the achievement or improvement points as the agency’s care points for each measure.

This distinction matters.

An agency may not yet be performing near the top of its cohort, but significant improvement from its own baseline can still generate meaningful points. On the other hand, an agency that historically performed well cannot assume that maintaining the same processes will continue producing a competitive score.

When reviewing the report, leadership should ask:

• Are we earning points because we are outperforming our cohort?
• Are we earning points because we are improving from our baseline?
• Which measures are earning neither achievement nor improvement points?
• Are recent gains strong enough to be sustainable?

The goal is not merely to improve a raw percentage. The goal is to improve performance in a way that earns care points and produces better patient outcomes.

Hospitalization Findings Require More Than a Readmission Report

The July 2026 IPR is especially important because it includes the full CY 2025 performance period for the Home Health Within-Stay Potentially Preventable Hospitalization measure.

A poor PPH result should not automatically lead to a generic instruction to “reduce hospitalizations.” That does not give clinicians or managers anything actionable.

Agencies should examine the processes behind the result:

• Was the patient’s risk accurately identified at admission?
• Were high-risk patients contacted early and frequently enough?
• Were medication discrepancies resolved promptly?
• Did clinicians document and escalate changes in condition?
• Were physicians notified with clear, actionable information?
• Was weekend and after-hours support available?
• Did patients and caregivers understand when to call the agency before calling 911?
• Were avoidable hospitalizations reviewed for recurring patterns?

The IPR identifies the outcome. The agency must identify the operational failures—or successes—that produced it.

Because PPH is claims-based, it also reflects earlier care periods. Current corrective actions may not appear immediately in the report. Leadership should therefore monitor leading indicators, such as timely start of care, medication reconciliation, physician communication, missed visits, same-day escalation, and post-hospitalization reviews, while waiting for claims data to catch up.

Discharge Function Starts at Admission

Discharge Function Score is not solely a therapy measure.

Accurate scoring begins with a defensible functional assessment at start or resumption of care. It continues through interdisciplinary care planning, appropriate visit utilization, clinician communication, patient participation, and accurate discharge assessment.

When Discharge Function performance is weak, agencies should evaluate whether:

• Functional limitations were accurately captured at admission.
• The plan of care included measurable functional goals.
• Nursing and therapy documentation reflected a coordinated approach.
• Visit patterns supported the patient’s clinical needs.
• Declines, plateaus, refusals, and barriers were documented.
• Discharge coding accurately reflected the patient’s true level of function.

An agency cannot repair a weak functional outcome only at discharge. The outcome is built throughout the episode.

Do Not Panic When Internal Reports Do Not Match CMS

CMS identifies several reasons an IPR may differ from an internal or vendor report, including reporting periods, data extraction dates, risk-adjustment methods, data sources, exclusions, measure calculations, Medicare Advantage inclusion, and rounding rules.

A difference does not automatically mean the CMS report or the vendor report is wrong.

Agencies should first confirm that they are comparing the same:

• Measurement period
• Patient population
• Data source
• Risk-adjustment methodology
• Measure definition
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The CMS IPR is the official source for HHVBP performance calculations. Internal dashboards remain valuable, but they should be reconciled with the IPR rather than treated as a replacement for it.

Turn the Report Into a 90-Day Action Plan

An IPR review should end with assigned responsibilities and measurable next steps—not simply a discussion at the QAPI meeting.

Start with the Measure Scorecard and identify the measures producing the largest loss of weighted points. Then determine whether the problem is primarily related to assessment accuracy, clinical practice, care coordination, patient education, utilization, documentation, survey experience, or data reporting.

Select a limited number of priorities. Assign an owner to each one. Establish leading indicators that can be monitored monthly rather than waiting for the next quarterly IPR.

Most importantly, communicate the findings to the people who influence them. Clinicians do not need another spreadsheet. They need to understand which practices must change, why they matter, and what successful performance looks like.

What Comes Next

The October 2026 IPR will be the first quarterly report to calculate an interim TPS using the CY 2026 measure set. That measure set adds Improvement in Bathing, Upper Body Dressing and Lower Body Dressing, as well as Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary–Post Acute Care. It will also use only Overall Rating and Willingness to Recommend from the HHCAHPS category.

Agencies should not wait for the October report to begin preparing.

The most successful organizations will use today’s IPR findings to strengthen assessment accuracy, clinical management, functional outcomes, patient experience and cost-conscious care now.

At Clover Consulting, we believe a report is only valuable when an agency knows what to do with it. Our role is to help home health organizations move beyond the score, identify the operational story behind the data, and build practical strategies that improve performance.