PMID: 16282812

Issn Print: 0884-741X

Publication Date: 2005/11/01


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Compliance With the Medicare Conditions of Participation: Keeping OASIS Data Private

REBECCA ZUBER

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Excerpt

Collection and management of OASIS data are critical components of compliance with the Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoPs) for home health-care agencies. OASIS data collection, encoding, and transmission present many challenges that will be addressed in future articles. This article focuses on the regulation that requires agencies to protect the privacy of these critical data.
All adult, nonmaternity patients were included in the mandate when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) first required home health-care agencies to collect OASIS data. Concerns were raised because the federal government was requiring that extensive personal information be collected and submitted to them on patients whose care was being covered by private insurance payers. Ultimately, CMS determined that it could not adequately protect the information of privately insured patients until encrypting technology was perfected and suspended OASIS data collection for the non-Medicare and non-Medicaid populations.
However, before this decision was made, CMS established a CoP-level requirement (Department of Health and Human Services, 2005) that home healthcare agencies and their contractors take steps to ensure the confidentiality of all patient-identifiable information, particularly OASIS data. These requirements were in place before the HIPAA privacy rules became effective and hold home healthcare agencies directly responsible for the behavior of their data management vendors where the privacy of OASIS data is concerned.
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