Home Health & Hospice Week

In a few short weeks, your OASIS C rubber will be hitting the road. Home health agencies secretly wishing for a Christmas miracle of delayed OASIS C implementation will be disappointed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is moving ahead with Jan. 1 implementation for OASIS C as planned, CMS's Debbie Terkay said in the Dec. 2 Open Door Forum for home care providers.

HHA clinicians will encounter a number of confusing OASIS C obstacles, which may not be helped by the guidance issued by CMS itself.

The agency will post some changes to the OASIS Manual guidance, a CMS official said in the call. But there is "no change whatsoever to the instrument data set" itself, she stressed. CMS has already issued a corrected form of its OASIS C grouper, noted CMS's Randy Throndset in the call.

Cram: If you've put off your OASIS C education until the last minute, you may benefit from a number of free resources (see story, p. 333).

Other home health agency issues raised in the forum include:

• OASIS login. As if OASIS C changes weren't enough to contend with, you soon can expect a change to how you login to the OASIS data collection system.

"To comply with CMS security regulations, CMS is changing the way agencies log in to the OASIS Submission System and CASPER Reporting," the agency says in a forum handout. "The change will require agency users to register for a named individual user account ID."

Registration will be staggered on a state-by-state basis, said a contractor official on the call.When it's your turn, you will be prompted at the usual login page to enter your information. Then you'll get a new login and password that you can use immediately to submit OASIS data, she said.

Watch for: CMS will issue the registration schedule later this month. Registration will start in late February.

• HH ABN. HHAs waiting for CMS to issue the new advance beneficiary notice will have to wait a little while longer. CMS originally proposed issuing the new home health ABN this fall (see Eli's HCW,Vol. XVIII, No. 21, p. 162).

The federal Office of Management and Budget has approved the new form, CMS's Evelyn Blaemire said in the forum. But don't expect CMS to issue it for a few more months. Until then, use the current HH ABN.