Home health agencies will continue to collect Outcome Assessment and Information Set data on their private-pay patients if a powerful senator gets his way. In a May 1 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) urged the HHS chief to back down on a proposal to eliminate the OASIS requirement for private pay patients. HHAs currently have to collect OASIS data on such patients, but they don't transmit it - making the process an apparently needless paperwork burden for agencies with many private-pay patients. Grassley, who is chair of the Senate Finance Committee, argues the private-pay collection requirement is consistent with the Medicare program's overall vision of ensuring beneficiaries receive the same quality of care as private pay patients. Since CMS purportedly has the technology to encrypt OASIS data appropriately, Grassley maintains the agency should begin collecting and analyzing the data as part of its quality improvement efforts.