Home Health & Hospice Week

Warning: Your OASIS oral medication management skills may need a tune-up. Improving medication management is one key to decreasing avoidable hospitalizations and improve patient outcomes -- not to mention avoiding publicly reported adverse events. Accurately assess your patient's ability to manage his oral medications with recent resources from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Focus on Ability M2020 (Management of oral medications), which is collected at start of care, resumption of care, and discharge, asks you to assess your patient's current ability to prepare and take all oral medications reliably and safely. This includes the ability to administer the correct dose at the right time. Answer M2020 based on the patient's ability, not necessarily on his actual performance, willingness, or compliance, says certified OASIS expert Ann Giles, director of ICD-9 coding & OASIS review services with Biloxi, Miss.-based PPS Plus Software. When answering M2020, assess the following, CMS says in [...]