Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS wants hospices to start collecting HIS data next summer.

CMS has released more details about the OASIS-like form it wants hospices to complete for patients, and it adds up to more work for providers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ newly proposed Hospice Item Set in-cludes 27 items at admission and 13 questions at discharge (including the signature of the person verifying record completion). Data from the items will support the seven quality measures CMS proposes for hospices in its 2014 payment rule (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No. 16).

It will take hospices 19 minutes to complete the admission HIS and 10 minutes for the discharge HIS, CMS estimates in its PRA paperwork.

Problem: "The calculation for NQF #1647 [Beliefs/Values Addressed] requires the extraction of medical record documentation of events that can occur at any time during the patient’s stay in hospice," notes the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. But the proposed discharge form doesn’t include a question about the topic.

Resource: The Paperwork Reduction Act packet of materials on the HIS tool, which contains the admission form, discharge form, item descriptions, and burden estimates, is at www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/PaperworkReductionActof1995/PRA-Listing.html — scroll down to the April 29 listing for "Hospice Item Set."

For a copy of the admission and discharge forms and direct link to the package, e-mail editor Rebecca Johnson at rebeccaj@eliresearch.com with "HIS forms" in the subject line.