Home Health & Hospice Week

Tip: Start assigning ICD-10 codes next month.

You don’t just have to worry about ICD-10 come Oct. 1. Your reimbursement and quality measures will hang in the balance when you transition to the OASIS form that uses the new diagnosis codes.

The Office of Management and Budget has approved the OASIS-C1/ICD-10 form, making it final, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services points out in a new release. CMS also has posted the OASIS-C1/ICD-10 Guidance Manual and a change overview document at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQIOASISUserManual.html. The new data set, which contains five revised diagnosis-based M items, is at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/OASIS-C1-DataSets.html.

Remember: You’ll use OASIS-C1/ICD-10 OASIS-C1/ICD-10 for M0090 dates Oct. 1 and later. But you’ll start using ICD-10 codes on your RAPs Aug. 3.

Why? Patients admitted on that date will require a RAP completed with ICD-9 codes. But, because the end of the episode will fall on Oct. 1 or later, the EOE claim must list ICD-10 codes. To keep the billing cycle running smoothly, you’ll need to dual code the RAP for all patients admitted on Aug. 3 to Sept. 30, advises coding expert Lisa Selman-Holman of Selman-Holman & Associates, CoDR — Coding Done Right and Code Pro University in Denton, Texas.

For more information about OASIS and ICD-10 coding, subscribe to Eli’s Home Health Coding & OASIS Expert at https://www.aapc.com/codes/.