OASIS Alert

But the reprieve may not last.

Home health agencies finally have something to be thankful for.

Without warning, as of Nov. 5 Medicare officials called off the collection of OASIS data for patients with payor sources other than Medicare and Medicaid.

Home care providers have asked repeatedly over the last year to be allowed to stop collecting data the government didn't use, but the announcement came as a surprise.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is "immediately suspending the requirement to collect private-pay patient data on OASIS," CMS Administrator Tom Scully said in an Open Door Forum for home care providers. A more official, written announcement will be forthcoming, but "for now assume you are not required to collect it as of today," Scully instructed.

This means all skilled care patients who are not under Medicare, Medicare HMO, Medicaid or Medicaid HMO payors do not have to have OASIS assessments completed or transmitted, according to National Association for Home Care & Hospice VP of Regulatory Affairs Mary St. Pierre.

Many providers see this announcement as a golden opportunity to do less paperwork and more patient care, she tells Eli. It should be easy to find assessments from pre-OASIS days to allow HHAs to easily make this change, she adds.

Scully made the decision because it seems a waste of taxpayers' money to require HHAs to collect the data when they don't submit or use it meaningfully, he explained.

But he warned that if CMS could come up with a meaningful use for the data, the collection of it could be reinstituted on very short notice. "This may very well be temporary," Scully cautioned.