Courtesy of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued an updated draft of the Outcome and Assessment Information Set E (OASIS-E). The instrument is a revision of the OASIS-E that was originally issued in March 2020, prior to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency.

The updated version includes the addition of the “patient declines to respond” in five of the items:

• Ethnicity;
• Race;
• Transportation;
• Health literacy; and
• D0700 social isolation.

CMS has also reorganized several of the items within sections and reassigned some items to new sections of the assessment tool. A puzzling aspect of the OASIS-E is that CMS has retained the items related to episode timing and therapy need. Both these items were necessary data set items for payment prior to the implementation of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM), but are no longer required to establish a case-mix grouping.

The OASIS-E is effective January 1, 2023. However,  the instrument is not yet final. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval is required and expected later this year. The instrument may be used for training but not as a final data set for data collection until OMB approval.