Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Other home care topics covered in CMS' home care forum include:   OASIS suspension. CMS confirmed that the language in its Dec. 11 letter to state surveyors should protect HHAs that were threatened with deficiencies after they discontinued OASIS data collection for private-pay patients based on CMS Administrator Tom Scully's instruction to do so in the Nov. 5 Open Door Forum. Besides making the OASIS suspension for non-Medicare, non-Medicaid patients effective Dec. 8, the letter also told surveyors to suspend any pending findings against agencies over the matter.
 
Agencies that are having trouble with their surveyors over the issue can contact their CMS regional office or the CMS central office for help, the staffer offered.
 
Tip: To figure out if they are required to collect OASIS on a patient, HHAs should check out M0150, the CMS official suggested. If the answer is 1, 2, 3 or 4, HHAs must collect OASIS. And the conditions of participation require agencies to conduct a comprehensive assessment on all patients, regardless of payor source, she stressed.   Outcomes. The next quarterly update for the Home Health Compare Web site, which compares agencies' patient data on 11 outcomes, will take place March 4, CMS said. The most recent update was this month. CMS continues to revise demographic information, such as an HHA's contact information and services provided, monthly.
 
In response to complaints that Home Health Compare and its accompanying newspaper ads that ran last November reflect poorly on agencies that serve Medicaid patients with chronic conditions, a CMS official pointed out that the numbers are risk-adjusted to take into account differences in the patient population. But the risk adjustment process isn't perfect, the staffer acknowledged: "We are working on better ways to improve the risk adjustment for this."