Home Health & Hospice Week

Wondering what exactly is going into the new OASIS-C-based outcome measures that your referral sources, competitors and patients can view starting next month? Now you can check it out.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has posted a report on the technical documentation of OASIS-C outcome, potentially avoidable event, and process measures on the Quality Measures section of its Quality Initiatives website. The report goes through the OASIS-C coding that comprises the measures.

Home health agencies can get their OASISC measure preview reports this month, said CMS's Robin Dowell in the May 25 Open Door Forum for home care providers. Then next month HHAs can get their OASIS-C outcome reports in the CASPER system.

Plus: Public display of the OASIS-C measures on Medicare's Home Health Compare website is also scheduled for next month. July 21 is the target date for the measures to go up, Dowell reported. Other OASIS items addressed in the forum include:

• OASIS training. You now can receive OASIS training from CMS on items pertaining to medications. CMS has posted a training module on OASIS items M2000 through M2040 online at http://surveyortraining.cms.hhs.gov/pubs/ProviderTraining.aspx -- click on "Provider Tools."

This module is just the first in a series of OASIS training sessions, said CMS's Pat Sevast in the forum. CMS plans to post several more modules this year, and more next year as well.

Tip: If you have questions after the training, the module directs you to a special mailbox -- cmssurveyortraining@cms.hhs.gov.

• Goodbye to M1012. CMS is waiting on Office of Management and Budget approval to scrap M1012 (Inpatient Procedure) from the OASISCassessment tool altogether. The agency plans to make the change in October 2013, when the tool is updated for the transition to ICD-10.

Until then, "you must still answer M1012," Dowell instructed. But it doesn't matter what M1012 answer you select, because it doesn't count toward payment, risk adjustment, or quality measure calculations, she added.

• Verizon transition. CMS's switch from AT&T to Verizon as its OASIS submission vendor has been pushed back, reported CMS's Kim Jasmin in the forum. The transition now will occur in August instead of the originally scheduled June.