Home Health & Hospice Week

The feds want you to clean up your open assessments before the ASAP switch.

If you’ve relegated OASIS-C1 implementation to the back burner, it’s time to bring it forward.

As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services noted in its most recent Open Door Forum, the Office of Management and Budget approved the OASIS-C1 form and CMS is moving full steam ahead on training for the new assessment tool (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXIII, No. 10). By mid-April, CMS plans to post the new OASIS-C1 User Manual, CMS’s Pat Sevast said in the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s March on Washington Conference. That will be followed by an April 30 training webinar, Sevast noted in the March 24 home health regulatory panel.

Warning: Surveyors and OASIS coordinators will get first priority for the training webinar that will provide 1,000 lines, Sevast said. After that, agencies and their reps can sign up on a first-come, first-served basis.

CMS is also working on revised OASIS-C1 questions-and-answers, Sevast explained to attendees. Until Oct. 1, CMS will post both the old OA-SIS-C and the new OASIS-C1 Q&As on the QTSO website. After Oct. 1, CMS will archive the old Q&As and post only the C1 set.

Along with the new assessment tool version comes a new transmission system — the Assessment Submission and Processing System (ASAP). Agen-cies will submit their data to the national ASAP system rather than individual state systems. The transition should be “seamless to you,” Sevast pledged.

Do this: CMS would like agencies to clean up their open assessments before the system transition, Sevast urged. There are about 250,000 open assessments currently, which isn’t bad considering the 17 million transmissions per year, Sevast judged. They are open because they have a start or resumption of care without a transfer or discharge, she explained.

“We appreciate any help you can give us,” CMS’s Mary Pratt said in the session. Getting rid of those assessments will help the transition “go as effortlessly as possible,” she said.

Agencies using HAVEN will also need to switch to the new jHAVEN system, which uses JAVA programming.

In October, CMS will start working on revising its 13 OASIS web-based training modules. CMS plans to eventually update them all for OASIS-C1, although that process will take some time, Sevast acknowledged.

Bonus: CMS hopes to obtain CEUs for the training, Sevast added. 

Note: CMS will post the approved OASIS form on its forthcoming OASIS-C1 website, a CMS source tells Eli. In the meantime, you can look at the form OMB approved at www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/PaperworkReductionActof1995/PRA-Listing-Items/CMS-R-245.html?DLPage=1&DLFilter=OASIS&DLSort=1&DLSortDir=descending in a zip file. Or you can e-mail editor Rebecca Johnson at rebeccaj@eliresearch.com with “OASIS-C1” in the subject line for a free PDF copy and link to the tool. You’ll be able to view the webinar at https://webinar.cms.hhs.gov/oasisc1.