The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released an updated Five-Star Quality Rating Program Technical User’s Guide, effective with the April 2026 refresh. In this update, the long-stay antipsychotic medication quality measure calculation will be updated to ensure that all residents with a history of schizophrenia are excluded, consistent with established specifications. A subset of these residents was not appropriately excluded from the measure data released in January 2026. CMS notes in the guide, this change did not have a significant impact on scores for this measure or quality measure ratings. However, the scoring cut points for this measure will be reset with the April 2026 refresh to place providers into deciles using data from 2024Q4-2025Q3.
Questions about this update or the revised long-stay antipsychotic medication measure may be sent to regulatory@ahca.org. Additionally, AHCA has a Tip Sheet available free to members about the revised measure.