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Latest Home Health News

Agencies must start required CAHPS testing during Q3 2010

Agencies have until the end of September 2010 to complete a month of testing of the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) if they want to receive a 2% Medicare inflation update in 2012. That requires signing on with a CMS-approved vendor to conduct the survey. The “dry run” will not be counted, and the scores from it will not be posted on Home Health Compare. Data taken from the dry run must be submitted to CMS by January 2011. For more on CAHPS, log onto https://homehealthcahps.org/.

– Bradford Pearson

CMS clarifies OASIS-C wound guidance

Surgical wounds healing by primary intention can change to healing by secondary intention if dehiscence or interruption of the incision occurs – and in those cases, clinicians can choose from any of the four options given in M1342, CMS says in a May response to an agency question submitted via the OASIS Mailbox. That’s a clarification from the guidance CMS issued in its April Q&As that instructed agencies to answer M1342 as “0 – newly epithelialized” or “3 – not healing” for wounds healing by primary intention.

– Karen Anderson

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