OASIS Alert

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finalized the OASIS-C1 form.

The Office of Management and Budget finished its review and approved the revised form on Feb. 6, said CMS’s Caroline Gallaher in the March 5 Open Door Forum for home care providers.

To help you prepare for the changed assessment tool, CMS plans to offer a 90-minute webinar on April 30 at 2 p.m. ET, said CMS’s Pat Sevast during the forum. On the agenda: the types of changes made to the dataset, changes to the OASIS-C1 guidance manual, and updates to the OASIS questions and answers, Sevast said.

Don’t wait: CMS will only provide 1,000 lines for the webinar on a first-come, first-served basis, Sevast said. Call in 15 minutes before the webinar to improve your chances of securing a spot.

Watch for: CMS plans to post the OASIS-C1 Guidance Manual two weeks before the webinar, Sevast said. “We want to give people a chance to look at the manual and come up with questions,” she said in the forum.

You can submit questions to the CMS OASIS mailbox at cmsoasisquestions@oasisanswers.com, and CMS officials may provide answers during the presentation. But don’t expect an opportunity to ask questions during the event. Presenters will want to research answers before responding, Sevast said.

Note: The approved OASIS form is available at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/Downloads/OASIS-C1-All-Items.pdf in a zip file. You’ll be able to view the webinar at https://webinar.cms.hhs.gov/oasisc1. View the new data specs at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/OASIS/DataSpecifications.html.