OASIS Alert

Home health agencies might actually see the new conditions of participation before the next list of coding changes.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published its upcoming regulatory plans in the Dec. 22, 2003 Federal Register. Once again, CMS has placed new home health conditions of participation on the agenda, this time setting a final rule date of June. The agency has delayed publishing new home health COPs for years as other changes have taken priority, but a CMS official in the December home health Open Door Forum expressed renewed dedication to getting the COPs out without further extensions.

CMS seeks to add reporting of OASIS data to the COPs in the next six months, according to the agenda. The current OASIS requirements are based on an interim final rule published in January 1999.

Because the COPS are written and in the regulatory clearance process, "there is certainly no reason why they could not get out in time," notes Bob Wardwell with the Visiting Nurse Associations of America.

But due to new burdens put on CMS by the recently enacted Medicare legislation, changes in top-level staff at the agency and other pressures, "there is no way to know if it will again be sidetracked," Wardwell tells Eli.

(CMS' regulatory agenda, under the Health and Human Services Department, is at www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a031222c.html.)