HCFA delays effective date of OASIS data transmission
A Healthcare InfoTech Staff Report
The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA; Baltimore) has announced that the effective date for home health agencies to begin transmitting Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) data will be later than the April 26 date currently specified in the OASIS reporting regulation. Earlier this month, HCFA officials confirmed that the agency would not require home health agencies to transmit this data for non-Medicare patients.
"We plan to not receive non-Medicare information until we are capable of encrypting it," a senior HCFA official confirmed last week. That change in policy, which was prompted by a growing concern over patient privacy, has now been extended to include Medicare patients as well.
In the meantime, home health agencies must still required to comply with the other requirements of the OASIS program. HCFA reiterated that agencies are expected to conduct comprehensive assessments, including the OASIS data set, as currently required under the new conditions of participation.
It also is unclear how long this reporting requirement will remain on hold. The agency indicated that "a system of records must be established" in order to accept OASIS data and that a notice establishing this system must be published in the Federal Register at least 30 days before the transmission effective date. HCFA said it expects to publish this notice soon.
Significant changes in OASIS may be on the way. But Gene Tischer, executive director of Associated Home Health Industries of Florida (AHHIF), said he is reminding his members that for the time being the only thing that has been changed is the April 26 date for transmission of OASIS data. "They are going to change the specifications on the patient identifiers," said Tischer, "but in terms of collecting the data and testing the transmission, I am not advising my members to change anything they are doing until I get more word from HCFA.
"I think they are going to have to modify the collection process to make sure that patient specific identifiable information is not included in the data collection effort," Tischer added. "They are still going to engage in this massive collection effort, but it will not include certain patient specific information."
In its April 7 statement, HCFA maintained that it "consistently safeguards confidential information and requires that states and providers take the same kinds of precautions to protect patient privacy." The statement went on to say that beneficiary is subject to "numerous physical, technical and procedural safeguards" to preserve privacy.
But HCFA still faces many questions, even on the privacy issue. "The question I have is that if it is the data set that currently violates the privacy law than what about all these agencies that are performing test transmissions and sending that data into state agencies between now and April 26," Tischer said. "Isn’t that violating the law?"
It also is clear that HCFA’s decision to postpone the effective date for transmittal of OASIS data leaves most of the home care industry’s objections unresolved. "HCFA thinks they have addressed the problem which was a privacy problem and nothing more than that," said the National Association for Home Care’s (Washington) Bill Dombie. "But we maintain that while the privacy issue is certainly an important issue, we have other concerns that have yet to be addressed at all."
HCFA said that it is working to ensure that collection and transmission of OASIS data achieves "the necessary balance between preservation of privacy and the statutorily required provisions to improve quality of care for home health patients and to pay providers appropriately."
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