OASIS Alert

Our experts help with some of your most pressing questions.

Do you know where to turn when you need definitive answers for OASIS C and diagnosis coding?

You may be wondering: "I'm responsible to provide coding resources as well as OASIS information for our organization's agencies, but the more questions I get, the more frustrated and confusing the whole issue of coding is," says Jan McLain, with Adventist Health System Home Care in Port Charlotte, Fla.

"What sources of home health diagnosis coding information are authoritative -- the ones we must follow from a legal standpoint?" McLain asks the experts.

Experts advise: The official coding guidance comes from the cooperating parties, says Ida Blevins, supervisor of reimbursement & information management with St. John's Hospital Home Health Services in Springfield, Ill. The cooperating parties are composed of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

The rules for selecting primary and secondary ICD-9 diagnosis codes for home care must follow the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting, developed by the cooperating parties and found in the front of your ICD-9 coding manual. Other official publications include:

• Coding Clinic for ICD-9-CM, published by the AHA, and

• The OASIS User Manual, Appendix D, published by CMS.

"'Coding Clinic' is where you can send your coding questions to get official answers. This publication provides the official Q&A for ICD-9 diagnosis coding," says Sparkle Sparks, with Redmond, Wash.-based OASIS Answers.

Caution: Home care coders should take care to send only questions regarding coding guidelines and not about particular OASIS coding items such as M1024 to Coding Clinic, says Lisa Selman-Holman, consultant and principal of Selman-Holman & Associates and CoDR -- Coding Done Right in Denton, Texas. The folks at Coding Clinic do not deal with OASIS issues, she adds.

Resource: You can submit OASIS Cspecific questions for CMS to answer. Simply send your questions to CMSOASISquestions@oasisanswers.com.