Home Health & Hospice Week
OASIS-C2 1 Step Closer To Implementation
3 new items on deck.
Now that OASIS-C2 is less than eight months away from its start date, it’s time to start mapping out your transition plans.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has posted the OASIS-C2 tool on its website, it said in a release sent to providers April 5. “This item set version is effective as of January 1, 2017,” CMS said. OASIS-C2 “includes three new standardized items, along with the modification and renumbering of select medication and integumentary items in order to standardize with other post-acute care settings. In addition, the lookback period has been modified for five items, and there are several formatting changes throughout the item set.”
The new items include M1028 Active Diagnoses, M1060 Height and Weight, and GG0170c Mobility. (For more details on the new and revised items, see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXV, No. 1).
The data set appears to be the same as the preliminary one CMS posted right before Christmas. CMS is still taking comments on the data set, publishing a Federal Register notice April 1 with a comment period ending May 31.
Stay tuned: CMS will issue its accompanying update to the OASIS Guidance Manual this summer, an agency official told Eli earlier this year. It will contain more details, such as the directions on how to opt out of weight and height item M1060.
HHAs can start laying the groundwork on staff training steps such as brushing up on OASIS basics like medications and implementing new procedures on taking height and weight, experts recommend. But HHAs should hold off on intensive staff education until after the manual is released, they agree.
Note: See the link to the data set in the “Downloads” section at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/OASIS-Data-Sets.html. The Federal Register notice is at www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-04-01/pdf/2016-07423.pdf. A free 15-minute podcast from Kornetti & Krafft Healthcare Solutions reviewing the changesreleased in December is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3TtnxyLGQ0.
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