OASIS Alert

Do you know your therapy abbreviations?

When it comes to answering M1860 — Ambulation/Locomotion, a few hints will help increase your accuracy. Make sure you keep the following in mind.

• OASIS item M1860 has nothing to do with the “majority of the time” rule, says Annette Lee, RN, MS, HCS-D, COS-C, AHIMA ICD-10 Trainer with Redmond, Wash.-based OASIS Answers. You need to know the time-frame (which is the day of assessment), but if your patient spends most of the day in bed, that doesn’t make him bedfast.
• “If you have teenagers, had teenagers, or were a teenager yourself, you know that they may stay in bed over 50 percent of the time, but they aren’t necessarily bedfast,” Lee explains.
• Consider the normal surfaces your patient must ambulate across. “If the patient doesn’t have any stairs, then you don’t need to test them on stairs,” Lee says. Consider the surfaces typical for the patient in his own environment.
• It’s important to know two key therapy abbreviations, says Karen Vance, OTR, supervising consultant with BKD in Colorado Springs, Colo. “CGA” or “Contact Guard Assistance” means the patient requires physical assistance. “SBA” or “Standby Assistance” means no contact is required, but the patient needs someone to stand by in case of loss of balance or stumbling. SBA can include supervisory assistance or comments and cues. If the therapist documents a need for CGA or SBA at all times, the patient can’t score an ability higher than a “3,” Vance explains.