OASIS Alert

Don’t wait for diagnosis coding to enter your M0090 date.

Like many OASIS items, M0090 seems easy to answer at first glance. Filling in the date you completed the assessment should be simple enough, but misconceptions about this item abound.

To make sure your answer is accurate, take note of these key M0090 points from Judy Adams, RN, BSN, HCS-D, HCS-O, with Adams Home Care Consulting in Asheville, N.C. and Pat Jump, with Rice Lake, Wis.-based Acorn’s End Training & Consulting:

• You can’t begin the start of care (SOC) OASIS assessment prior to the first billable visit, which is the SOC date. So M0090 may be the same date as M0030 — Start of care date, but it can never be before the M0030 date.
• While most OASIS assessments require a home visit, the SOC M0090 does not always coincide with a home visit.
• If the OASIS assessment is completed over the course of more than one visit, your M0090 response is the last date any data was gathered about the client’s assessment.
• When completing an RFA 6 — Transfer to Inpatient Facility – patient not discharged from agency, RFA 7 — Transfer to Inpatient Facility – patient discharged from agency, or RFA 8 — Death at Home, record the date your agency completes the data collection after learning of the event in M0090. These events do not require a home visit.
• The date the assessment is complete is the date all data about the client has been collected, not the date the paperwork or documentation is completed.
• Clarification and/or further instructions from the physician related to the client’s assessment are considered part of “data collection.”
• Provided you have collected all other comprehensive assessment data, in a therapy-only case where the RN at the office completes the drug regimen review, the date the RN in the office communicates the drug regimen review findings back to the therapist becomes the M0090 date.
• When you have collected all OASIS data, including determination of all diagnoses, but the agency coder has not yet assigned the correct numeric codes based upon the diagnoses provided by the clinician, you don’t need to delay the M0090 date until coding staff assigns the numeric codes.
• When agency policy requires a quality improvement supervisor to review all completed OASIS data sets, M0090 is the date the last piece of data was collected, not the date the supervisor reviewed the OASIS data set.