Situation Report | August 10, 2020
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently issued a tip sheet that outlines the quality reporting requirements for home health agencies (HHAs) in the current public health emergency.
On March 27, 2020, CMS announced temporary relief from quality reporting requirements. HHAs are exempted from reporting OASIS and Home Health Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers System (CAHPS) data for quarter 4 of 2019 through quarter 2 of 2020 (October 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020).
Because this temporary exception ends June 30, HHAs are expected to resume timely quality data collection and submission of OASIS and CAHPS Home Health Survey data starting on July 1, 2020.
CMS is also continuing waivers related to the OASIS collection and submission time frames as follows: 1) extending the 5-day completion requirement for the comprehensive assessment to 30 days; and 2) waiving the 30-day OASIS submission requirement.
In addition, CMS is delaying the release of the OASIS-E data set until January 1 of the year that is at least one full calendar year after the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
There are many more details in the tip sheet. Please read it in full to ensure compliance with quality reporting requirements.