OASIS Alert

DAVE a new measure designed to increase data accuracy will soon be moving from the nursing home setting to home health agencies.

Like the Minimum Data Set in nursing homes, OASIS data is the basis of a variety of important functions payment, quality, survey, research at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, noted CMS official Heidi Gelzer in a presentation at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice's annual policy conference April 7 in Washington.

To make sure that data most accurately represents patients, CMS has implemented the Data Assessment and Verification (DAVE) Contract. The project aims to ferret out areas that are inconsistent or need further analysis, and educate providers, Gelzer explained.

DAVE clinicians will shadow provider clinicians and fill out OASIS assessments on the same patients at the same time. The DAVE staff and the provider staff then would compare their assessments and talk about the differences, Gelzer said.

The nursing home DAVE project is in the pilot stage, with the national rollout beginning in a few months. The OASIS reviews are "just in the planning stages," Gelzer added.

CMS won't be keeping the DAVE findings to itself or sharing them just with providers, however. In a July 2, 2002 letter to state survey agencies outlining the 2003 survey budget (S&C-02-40), CMS makes clear it will be sharing DAVE accuracy results with the survey agencies. "We anticipate increased [survey agency] involvement and general assistance to providers coordinating activities with DAVE staff and taking enforcement actions as required," the letter said.