Nursing Assessments and Home Health Coding
Posted by HEALTHCAREfirst Blogger on Mon, Sep 27, 2010 @ 08:30 AM
by Shelly Jenks, RN, COS-C
As more and more home health agencies are feeling the squeeze of their profit margin, many have eliminated the position of clinical educator. The result is that many new clinicians get their OASIS knowledge from documents they read during orientation or from preceptors they ride with doing visits. While both of these types of training have their place, are they enough for a new home health clinician to have a complete and accurate understanding of the how’s and why’s needed to obtain the information asked in an OASIS assessment?
Many home health agencies may need to ask themselves if their OASIS training is adequate. Could the quest to increase productivity from clinicians skew the accuracy of data obtained during an assessment? As clinicians hurry to finish OASIS visits could they be missing information that ultimately affects reimbursement?
A good part of a home health agency's success relies on the clinician’s home assessment of a patient. Agencies have to decide how to get the most accurate information. Is it having OASIS experts come into your office for regularly scheduled in-services? Is it sending your clinicians to OASIS trainings? Is it buying home health software that educates the clinician or QAs the assessment data? Is it having a position within an agency that is ultimately responsible for knowing when a clinician is ready and knowledgeable enough to bring in accurate OASIS assessments?
Once the clinician is doing accurate answering of OASIS questions, then an agency can justify the information with accurate coding. This also brings to light the question of who’s doing the coding. Let’s face it -- today’s home health agencies need specific and accurate skills to obtain correct reimbursement. There are several options out there to achieve this goal, including utilizing a home health coding service. This type of service typically insures that you have the best & most accurate coding possible.
In summary, when it comes to assessments and coding, each agency needs to analyze what they have in place and determine if they are getting the best bang for their buck.