In less than three weeks, home health agencies will be transitioning from OASIS-C-2 to the new OASIS D assessment. Given all the regulatory changes this year and with the holiday season upon us, it has really been a sprint to get staff trained.
HCA of MA recently held three training sessions for members and not surprisingly there is concern with staff being ready, especially around the nuanced degrees of functional assessments and specifically related to the new items related to mobility and self-care. While OASIS-D comes advertised as “dropping 28 previous M-Items” from OASIS-C-2, the additional assessments will require lots of creative patient engagement on the part of the admitting nurse or therapist, according to HCA Director of Regulatory and Clinical Affairs Colleen Bayard.
“OASIS-D is intended to begin to standardize patient assessment and quality measures across all post-acute providers,” said Bayard. “But for us in home care some of the new items ask for very nuanced responses. For example, the mobility item (GG0170) has 17 mobility activities that the clinician must ‘code’ with a 6-point scale from independent to dependent or ‘code’ with 4 possible responses related to ‘activity not attempted.’ he admitting clinician is responsible for assessing a patient’s ability to stair climb, pick up an object from the floor and even make a car transfer.
During the Alliance’s trainings, Bayard warned agencies to expect some productivity issues related to the learning curve, but stressed that the training message across the industry should be: “assess once, score twice.” In other words, be aware of OASIS M assessment questions which track to newly added GG assessments and use the same assessment to respond to multiple OASIS items in the same category. Bayard also recommends close auditing or self-monitoring in the initial months, especially related to the responses “patient refused” or “dash” (not attempted). (Ask: could the clinician interview a family member as a way to get a response?)
Bayard recommends using the “Expansion of the one Clinician Rule” to your advantage because CMS is encouraging an interdisciplinary team approach with OASIS-D. Bayard’s final advice: “As you focus on your training be aware that your nurses are going to need to have a strong intersection of observational skills with interview skills.”
HCA has several places members can come to share and learn as they move past Jan 1. Our Clinical Directors and Quality Improvement list serves and networking groups will be highly focused on OASIS-D as winter turns to spring. The Clinical Directors next meet Thursday, January 10 and the QI Managers will next meet on January 9th. Meeting information is here. Our email groups are here.
If you haven’t already studied it – here is a list of more than 100 answers to OASIS questions received by CMS from the industry during recent CMS in-person trainings and webinars.
Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.
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