The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to finetune its draft of the new OASIS-E for home health, and made available an updated version of the assessment instrument earlier this month.
The latest draft includes tweaks such as separation of race and ethnicity questions into separate categories, and the addition of a “Patient declines to respond” option for some items. Other changes included new item sequencing and the removal of Item M2016, Patient/Caregiver Drug Education Intervention.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not approved the latest version of OASIS-E, no guidance has been issued and additional changes could still be made to OASIS-E during the finetuning process, SimiTree consultants caution.
Overall, however, the instrument is in the form expected for implementation at the start of 2023, and SimiTree consultants say they do not expect significant changes to be made.
Confirmed implementation date
The new version of OASIS is on track for a Jan. 1, 2023, launch despite previous indications that COVID-19 could delay implementation.
“CMS has confirmed that OASIS-E data collection will begin with OASIS assessments that have a M0090 date on or after Jan. 1, 2023,” said Jennifer Osburn, SimiTree’s Clinical Learning and Development Solutions Manager.
“Previously, CMS had said it would wait to implement OASIS-E until after the COVID-19 public health emergency ended, but the CY 2022 Home Health Final Rule changed that, establishing an implementation date of Jan. 1, 2023,” she said.
“And CMS confirmed in its most recent issue of Quarterly OASIS Q&As that OASIS-E data collection will begin on Jan. 1, 2023,” Osburn added.
Sweeping changes
OASIS is the acronym for home health’s Outcome and Assessment Information Set, a patient-specific, standardized assessment required by CMS to plan care for home health patients. The instrument is also used to determine reimbursement and measure quality. Clinicians are required to complete the OASIS at several timepoints throughout a patient’s episode of care.
The version known as OASIS-E will be the most intensive remake since Medicare first launched the assessment instrument in 1999, according to Osburn.
“OASIS-E introduces several new categories of data collection for home health as part of standardized data collection efforts across the entire post-acute care spectrum,” Osburn said. “In addition to items designed to capture information about the patient’s functional status and abilities, OASIS-E will add sections designed to assess patient cognitive patterns, behavior and mood.”
Standardization efforts
Standardization of data collection among post-acute care providers was mandated by the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014, but aligning data collection among various provider types has been a slow process.
“OASIS D-1 brought the first set of standardized information collection to home health in 2018, when the GG items were introduced to support measurement domains mandated by IMPACT,” Osburn said. “The D-1 version of OASIS enabled CMS to align the OASIS with similar data collection instruments used by other providers, such as the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility-Patient Assessment Instrument (IRF-PAI), the Long-Term Care Hospital assessment set, and the Minimum Data Set (MDS) used by Skilled Nursing Facilities.”
OASIS-E will continue the alignment of data collection, Osburn said, by introducing many new assessment items in these primary categories:
- SPADEs: Standardized Patient Assessment Data Elements
- BIMs: Brief Interview for Mental Status
- SDHs: Social Determinants of Health
The updated OASIS-E draft can be downloaded here.
SimiTree can help
SimiTree consultants offer OASIS accuracy training in both on-site and customized online training sessions, and are available to schedule OASIS-E training sessions for agencies.
“OASIS training has become even more important for 2022, as we head toward the launch of OASIS-E in 2023 and prepare for the first performance year under nationwide Value-Based Purchasing,” Osburn said.
OASIS measures will make up approximately one-third of an agency’s total performance score under Value-Based Purchasing, with performance scores from 2023 impacting payment adjustments in 2025.
Use the form below to start the discussion about getting the OASIS training your agency needs for success under VBP and OASIS-E.