Home Health & Hospice Week

A big training burden is now off your plate for the latter half of 2020 — and in enough time to actually help.

On April 30, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced “another round of sweeping regulatory waivers and rule changes” for Medicare providers — including a delay to the Jan.1, 2021, revamp of the OASIS instrument.

Now, “HHAs will be required to use OASIS-E … beginning with discharges and transfers on January 1st of the year that is at least 1 full calendar year after the end of the COVID-19 [Public Health Emergency],” CMS says in an Interim Final Rule published in the May 8 Federal Register.

For example: If the COVID-19 PHE ends on Sept.20, 2020, “HHAs will be required to begin collecting data on those measures beginning with patients discharged or transferred on January 1, 2022,” CMS explains. If the PHE stretches into 2021, the start date would bump to January 2023.

OASIS-E contains standardized patient assessment data elements (SPADEs) and data collection for transfer of health (TOH) quality measures, CMS notes in the rule. The 2020 final rule required their adoption in 2021, but now the agency is relaxing that timeline due to COVID-19.

“This delay will enable these providers to continue using the current versions of their assessment instruments, with which they are already familiar,” CMS says in the rule. Skilled nursing and inpatient rehab facilities are also getting delays for their tools.

The waiver additions and rule changes were “informed by requests from healthcare providers,” CMS says in a release.

“The delay is very good — and needed — as there are a lot of changes that would require education starting no later than the fall,” cheers Sharon Litwin with 5 Star Consultants in Camdenton, Missouri. With providers uncertain “of what the fall will bring, it is very positive that the home health industry and clinicians do not have to learn OASIS-E as well.”

“As an OASIS fan, I am disappointed with the delay,” acknowledges consultant Cindy Krafft with Kornetti & Krafft Health Care Solutions.“But it makes sense to move it as the industry deals with the implications of the pandemic,” says Krafft.

Another plus: Unlike with some delays, CMS has announced this one well in advance, Litwin observes. That will allow agencies to avoid wasted ramp-up.

Reminder: OASIS-E will add 22 new standardized patient assessment data element (SPADE) items, plus some sub-items.And CMS will add two new quality measures on health information transfer and three new OASIS items to support them.

The new items address a number of areas including providing medication lists to providers at discharge and transfer, mental status, and Social Determinants of Health (for more OASIS-E change details, see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXVIII, No. 41).

Note: The Interim Final Rule is at www.cms.gov/files/document/covid-final-ifc.pdf.