OASIS Alert

Your clinicians don't need to collect all data face-to-face.

When a patient dies or transfers out of your care, your clinicians can collect OASIS data without being in the patient's presence.

"These time points are not assessments and do not require the clinician to be in the physical presence of the patient," says the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in a new clarification posted on the OASIS Certificate & Competency Board (OCCB).

Timesaver: Not only can your clinicians simply call patients or their caregivers to collect the necessary information, you don't have to ensure that the clinician has a history with the patient, the clarification states.

However, your agency might be best served by ensuring that the clinician is familiar with the patient's condition, says Judy Adams of LarsonAllen in Charlotte, N.C. The clinician should "at least know what the patient was being seen for so that he or she can ask the right questions to get full information from the caregiver or family member," she says.

Goal: Your phone call must get as much pertinent information as possible about the patient's death or transfer as possible, including the what, when, where, and why.

Adams suggests you start with these questions to milk as much data from the patient's family or caregivers as you can:

When did the patient go to the hospital?

What happened to the patient?

Where is the patient now?

What did the ER physicians say?