New at Noyce Consulting

CMS presents, as its Happy New Year wish, the latest version of the Outcome Assessment Information Set (OASIS) – OASIS-C2. And next year’s “Happy New Year” gift will be implementing the new OASIS-C2 January 1, 2017.

Three new standardized items & ten modified, renumbered items appear in OASIS-C2. The newest OASIS looks a bit different, too. Single data-entry boxes replace check boxes in OASIS-2 for items with only one possible response, and are formatted like Hospice Information Set (HIS) items – a plus for the RN who works in both home health and hospice.

Every home health clinician likes caring a lot. 

But Medicare says what home health should do and do not!
A Medicare gift for this holiday season?
OASIS-C2! No one quite knows the reason.

Hurry! Time is running out to send CMS your views on its pending "Discharge to Community" Quality Measure for Home Health Agencies.

This new quality measure WILL be part of future OASIS data collection. But CMS wants input from experienced home health providers like you about how CMS plans to calculate this outcome for CASPER reports and potential display on Home Health Compare. You know the industry. Tell CMS which risk-adjustment variables should affect this outcome, and which records that experience tells you CMS should exclude from the calculations.

Huddle up, hospice and Home Health providers! Come January 1, 2016, hospice and home health claims must specify whether an RN or LPN delivered the skilled nursing service on each line item. If you needed more evidence that scrutiny of the hospice industry is the healthcare industry with more rapidly increasing scrutiny than other providers who bill Medicare, you’ll find it in Change Request 9369, dated October 16, 2015. Details appear in italicized red in the Transmittal 3378 of the CMS Medicare Claims Processing Manual. But here are the basics, in Medicare’s own words: “This Change Request creates new codes...