July 2023 CMS Quarterly OASIS Q&As

Posted in Home Care, INDUSTRY NEWS

 Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare

CMS just posted the July 2023 CMS Quarterly OASIS Q&As(3 pages).

Here are the Questions – with Answers – for this edition:

  • Question 1: We understand that OASIS is not required to be collected when a patient receives only one visit in a quality episode. If a SOC OASIS is completed (to facilitate billing for the single visit), should we also complete a discharge OASIS?
  • Question 2: We have a situation where a clinician has left the agency and there are several OASIS assessments that our QA department had questions on, regarding the OASIS codes that were selected by the assessing clinician. Since the clinician is no longer available to provide their input how should the identified discrepancies be handled? Can the OASIS reviewer change the codes even if the assessing clinician cannot give their approval?
  • Question 3: With the ending of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, what is being used to determine when the OASIS assessment completion and transmission waivers have ended? Is it based on the M0090 – Date Assessment Completed or the M0030 – Start of Care Date?
  • Question 4: How should C1310 – Signs and Symptoms of Delirium (from CAM ©) be coded when a patient is comatose at baseline and at the time of assessment?
  • Question 5: If a patient has an order to be NPO in anticipation of a procedure/surgery is this considered either a mechanically altered diet or a therapeutic diet when coding K0520 – Nutritional Approaches?
  • Question 6: If a patient has been receiving care in their home under a Hospital at Home program, and is then referred to Home Health within 14 days of discharge from the program, how should M1000 – Inpatient Facility be coded?
  • Question 7: When coding M1600 – Has this patient been treated for a Urinary Tract Infection in the past 14 days? as 1 – Yes, does there also need to be a specific ICD-10 code added to the OASIS? The EMR that our agency uses provides a warning when we code 1 – Yes but there isn’t a specific code identifying the UTI entered into the software system.

If you missed a past quarterly Q&A, you can find those here.  Scroll down that landing page to:

You’ll find the Q&A documents dating back to January 2013.