Home Health & Hospice Week

Throw out this coding convention when deciding on diagnosis codes for the new OASIS C item. If you follow one coding guideline by filling out M1024 without taking reimbursement into account as the feds say, you'll actually be going against another instruction for completing the item. Your home health agency chooses patients' diagnosis codes based on the focus of care and the other pertinent diagnoses, but making certain you get the case mix points your agency deserves is likely always in the back of your mind. Unfortunately, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services isn't helping matters. In the body of the OASIS User Manual, Appendix D, CMS advises home care coders not to select their diagnosis codes based on case mix points, says Lisa Selman-Holman of Selman-Holman & Associates and CoDR -- Coding Done Right in Denton, Texas. And in the M1024 instructions, CMS does not instruct coders not to [...]