Home Health & Hospice Week

Medicare wants you to get up to speed on mobility, self-care, prior functioning, and prior device use OASIS items — and it’s lending a helping hand with new training materials.

Resource No. 1: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is offering newly updated training courses on the Section GG items at https://pac.training/courses/GG_course1/#/.

Resource No. 2: CMS is also offering new “companion job aids” covering GG0130A. Eating, GG0130B. Oral Hygiene, GG0130C. Toileting Hygiene, GG0130E. Shower/Bathe Self, GG0130F. Upper Body Dressing, GG0130G. Lower Body Dressing, and GG0130H. Putting On/Taking Off Footwear.

“The job aids provide clinically relevant information to assist providers in understanding specific guidelines and clinical considerations that should be applied to coding GG0130. Self-Care items,” CMS says in a message to providers.

Resource No. 3: And CMS “is offering three pocket guides to assist providers in assessing and coding self-care and mobility, falls, and pressure ulcers/injuries,” CMS says in a separate message. “The pocket guides provide a quick reference for important terms and definitions that promote coding accuracy.”

Both the job aids and pocket guides are in the “Downloads” section of CMS’ Home Health Quality Reporting Training Webpage at https://edit.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/Home-Health-Quality-Reporting-Training.