Question:
South Carolina Subscriber
Answer:
The instruction to mark "NA" for changes made due to an improvement in a diagnosis applies to existing diagnoses that improved. For example, if your patient was an insulin dependent diabetic and during the past 14 days, her subcutaneous insulin was discontinued and oral hypoglycemics were started due to improvements in her diabetes, you would select "NA," the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services advises in the January 2012 OASIS Quarterly Q&As.You wouldn't report this diagnosis in one of the slots provided in M1016 because it was due to an improvement of the existing diagnosis, CMS explains.
Another example:
Your patient completes taking antibiotics and her infection is resolved. You have discontinued the medication. Report this as NA, "because it represents an improvement," CMS says.On the other hand, if your patient was newly diagnosed with diabetes during the past 14 days and started on hypoglycemics, this is a treatment change that was
not due to an improvement, CMS points out. So in this case the diabetes mellitus diagnosis (250.xx) would be reported in M1016.Note:
Read the rest of the January 2012 OASIS Quarterly Q&As here: https://www.qtso.com/download/hha/CMS_OAI4thQtr2011QAs01182012.pdf.