HCFA answers your biggest questions
Home care agencies and other interested parties recently asked The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in Baltimore to explain some of the more complicated details of the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS). Following are those questions, and HCFA's answers:
Question: When integrating OASIS data items into a home health agency's own assessment system, can the OASIS data items be inserted in an order that best suits the agency's needs, i.e., can they be added in any order, or must they remain in the order presented on the OASIS form?
Answer: Integrating the OASIS items into the home health agency's own assessment system in the order presented on the OASIS form would facilitate data entry of the items into the data collection and reporting software. However, it is not mandatory. Agencies may integrate the items in such a way that best suits the agency's assessment system.
Some agencies may wish to electronically collect their OASIS data and upload it for transmission to the state. As long as the agency can format an output file for transmission to the state that is in the 1448 byte data string format specified by HCFA, the order in which it is collected doesn't matter. This string is defined in the data specifications currently available on HCFA's Web site: http://www.hcfa.gov.
Question: Does the statement above consider the skip patterns embedded in the OASIS tool? Will agencies be allowed to modify skip patterns through alternative sequencing of questions?
Answer: While we encourage home health agencies to integrate the OASIS data items into their own assessment instrument in the sequence presented on the OASIS B-1 (6/98) form, we are not precluding them from doing so in a sequence other than that presented on the OASIS form. However, we do not recommend this because of the skip patterns built into the OASIS form. Agencies collecting data in hard copy form must incorporate the OASIS data items EXACTLY as they are written into their own assessment instrument. Agencies may wish to incorporate the assessment categories (e.g., ADLs/IDLs, Medications, etc.) into their own assessment instrument in a different order than presented in the OASIS form. We caution the agency to consider any skip instructions contained within the questions in the assessment categories and provide the proper instruction.
When agencies encode the OASIS data they have collected, that is, enter it into a computer for electronic transmission to the state agency, data MUST be transmitted in the sequence presented on the OASIS form. The software that HCFA is developing for this function (HAVEN) will prompt the user to enter data in a format that will correctly sequence it and ultimately be acceptable for transmission.
HAVEN will include certain editing functions that will flag the user when there is missing information or a question as to the accuracy or validity of the response. Agencies may choose to use software other than HAVEN to report their data so long as the data is ultimately presented to the State agency in a file format approved by HCFA, that is, a file that contains the OASIS data items in the same order as contained on the OASIS B-1 (6/98) form.
If you have any questions or concerns about OASIS and its requirements, you may send them via e-mail to [email protected].
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