Creating an Ongoing Culture of OASIS Excellence
OASIS accuracy helps ensure the best possible patient care, outcomes, and reimbursements for home health agencies. But we’ve heard from many agencies that they struggle to create an ongoing culture of OASIS competence—from keeping clinicians motivated to identifying problem areas and maintaining accurate documentation. With that in mind, we’ve identified these key best practices for encouraging success and confidence with OASIS over the long term.
Embrace OASIS and maintain a positive focus
Helping clinicians feel empowered, supported, and informed about OASIS can go a long way. When clinicians only hear about errors that they make, their accuracy and morale tend to be negatively impacted. Focus instead on helping them clearly interpret the information, gain confidence, and understand the benefits (the why) of accurate data collection.
Create a standardized training process
Ensure that your current data collection and review process is as effective as possible, with the primary goal of reducing errors. Implement a standardized framework that promotes consistency, reduces confusion, and educates clinicians. A good ongoing strategy is to establish a strong foundation for accurate OASIS data collection with high-quality OASIS onboarding and continually refresh knowledge with effective training and management tools.
Identify and focus on your agency’s problem areas
The four biggest problem areas for agencies tend to be Functional Assessment, Cognitive Behavioral Issues, Wounds, and Medications. Take a close look at your performance to identify any areas that need improvement and make adjustments as necessary.
Assess clinician competence more accurately with hands-on training
Clinicians come into organizations with varying levels of ability with the OASIS tool. Assess and improve competence with hands-on training that tests the ability to accurately score OASIS questions based on true-to-life patient demonstrations.
Monitor and remediate errors on an ongoing basis
Errors in OASIS can significantly reduce reimbursement, affect patient outcomes, and bog down your QA process. Without proper training, your clinicians might be replicating errors without realizing it. Identify common patterns of errors and target your training to those areas. By incorporating effective monitoring along with refresher courses focused on the HHVBP- and PGDM-relevant items, you can reinforce knowledge, encourage practice, and improve accuracy.
Perform home visits to observe OASIS data collection in action
Performing home visits is a good way to better understand where your clinicians lack clarity and need more training, as direct observation provides insights you might not have gained otherwise. Some agencies perform home visits only during new-hire orientation, but consider doing so on a routine basis as well after your clinicians have completed their onboarding.
How MedBridge Can Help
The MedBridge OASIS Training Solution includes a comprehensive series of integrated, effective OASIS course packages designed to provide your clinicians with everything they need to know about OASIS-E, while keeping their skills sharp over time with targeted boosters. By providing education directly to staff rather than trainers, our solution elevates efficiency and accuracy.
Developed in partnership with K&K Health Care Solutions, one of the leading experts in home health compliance and regulatory education, our solution allows organizations to achieve an ongoing culture of OASIS excellence by creating a standardized OASIS program that focuses on key problem areas. And because it’s integrated with our Learning Management System, it allows teams to easily create, administer, customize, and scale automated training programs and view completion status.
