The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the draft copy of the updated Outcome and Assessment Information Set, OASIS-C2. The newly updated OASIS-C2 data set is scheduled to replace OASIS-C1 on January 1, 2017, and has multiple changes to increase efficiency and ensure compliance with the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014.¹

The IMPACT Act requires post-acute care providers to report standardized patient assessment data to track quality measures and resource use, among other things. It also states that this data must be standardized and interoperable across all settings defined as post-acute care to facilitate coordinated care, ensure patient-centered care, allow easy exchange of data, and improve outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries. Facilities required to adhere to this regulations include Long-Term Care Hospitals (LTCHs), Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (IRFs), and Home Health Agencies (HHAs).

CMS’s Quality Goals¹ are to:

1. Make care safer by reducing harm caused in the delivery of care.
2. Ensure that each person and family is engaged as partners in their care.
3. Promote effective communication and coordination of care.
4. Promote the most effective prevention and treatment practices for the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease.
5. Work with communities to promote wide use of best practices to enable healthy living.
6. Make quality care more affordable for individuals, families, employers, and governments by developing and spreading new healthcare delivery models.

The draft copy of OASIS-C2 includes several new M items, such as M1028 which asks if the patient has two specific co-morbid or co-existing diagnoses: PVD/PAD and Diabetes Mellitus. Other new M items include the patient’s height and weight (M1060) and a new 6-point scale for rating a patient’s functional abilities and goals as they pertain to lying to sitting on side of the bed (GG0170C). There are also multiple OASIS-C1 items that were replaced or updated in the updated set.

Other items had small formatting changes, which will improve and clarify the question intent for the assessing clinician.

The OASIS-C2 changes will help to standardize data collection for the following domains across post-acute settings.

• Skin integrity and changes in skin integrity
• Functional status, cognitive function, and changes in function and cognitive function
• Medication reconciliation
• Incidence of major falls
• Transfer of health information and care preferences when an individual transitions
• Resource use measures, including total estimated Medicare spending per beneficiary
• Discharge to community
• All-condition risk-adjusted potentially preventable hospital readmissions rates

The OASIS-C2 draft is currently scheduled for implementation January 1, 2017. Few changes typically occur before implementation of drafts such as these.

Make sure you’re ready for the changes before the updates come into effect next year. More information on OASIS-C2 can be found on the CMS website, and information on the IMPACT Act of 2014 can be found here.

¹ https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/Post-Acute-Care-Quality-Initiatives/IMPACT-Act-of-2014-and-Cross-Setting-Measures.html