Home Health & Hospice Week

Lack of official instruction stalls action for some agencies. 

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But not in the case of suspension of the requirement to collect OASIS data for private-pay patients.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Tom Scully announced in a Nov. 5 Open Door Forum that effective immediately, home health agencies no longer are required to collect OASIS data for patients with payors other than Medicare and Medicaid.

HHAs should continue collecting data for patients with Medicare HMO and Medicaid HMO payors, who aren't exempt under the provision, cautions Mary St. Pierre with the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. But patients who pay out of pocket or who have private insurance carriers no longer come under the OASIS data collection requirement, CMS made clear in the forum.

The oral notice was met with "relief from providers," says Joe Hafkenschiel with the California Association for Health Services at Home.

"Most VNAs, and particularly the nursing staff, are greeting the suspension ... with unrestrained joy," adds Bob Wardwell with the Visiting Nurse Associations of America. "Most VNAs are seizing this as welcome relief."

Official, written word on the suspension should come out as soon as possible, Scully pledged in the forum. But at press time, CMS had issued no such document. That's making some agencies nervous about discontinuing their OASIS data collection for the affected patients.

"Nobody quite believed it" when Scully announced the suspension, notes Jean MacDonald with the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care.

In New Mexico, the state's Quality Improvement Organization passed on word from CMS that it might be better to wait for an official instruction before scrapping the OASIS collection, says Joie Glenn of the New Mexico Association for Home and Hospice Care. Regulations already let agencies off the hook for transmitting such data.

In Louisiana, the state OASIS Coordinator has cautioned agencies to "be conservative and continue collecting the data until the long-awaited memo comes out," reports Warren Hebert of the HomeCare Association of Louisiana.

"Agencies are looking at all the information and making their decisions," Glenn tells Eli.

But NMAHHC happened to have its annual convention right after the forum in which Scully announced the suspension. At the meeting, an official from the Region VI CMS Regional Office who presented at the conference backed up Scully's statement, Glenn reports.

The state OASIS Coordinator in Indiana is telling agencies it's all systems go with the suspension, MacDonald reports.

And Scully's announcement in the forum was quite definitive, points out Gene Tischer with the trade association Associated Home Health Industries of Florida. Scully announced CMS was "immediately suspending the requirement to collect private-pay patient data on OASIS" and instructed listeners to "assume you are not required to collect it as of today" (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XII, No. 40, p. 314).

"The decision is being made now," Tischer says. Most folks aren't waiting for a written confirmation of Scully's statements before taking action, he believes.