This Monday Minute assists in making agencies aware of the new CMS released GG Education Item for OASIS completion.
Hello everyone, welcome to our Monday Minute. Today I want to discuss, very briefly, the new GG Item Education that CMS has published on their website. We will provide a link to this new education in this Minute and hopefully you’ll find it very useful in the training of your staff specific to the GG Items in the OASIS documentation. The one thing I found extremely interesting and, honestly glad to see, is that in this GG Item education it discusses not only the assessment strategies and how those questions should be responded to for Home Health, they also include that same strategic assessment data for other entities that use that same items, such as skilled nursing facilities. In addition to that, the first of the three segments goes into the details of why GG, the impact that they have in our documentation in outcome measurements and how the GG Items do affect risk adjustment when it comes to outcome measures. There’s no doubt that there has been confusion with the GG items since they have been added to the Home Health OASIS document and hopefully this will help clear up some of that confusion.
One of the situations we definitely have encountered recently is the conflict agencies seem to have with the clinicians trying to tie together the M1800 ADLs section to the GG Items. There are some cases when those GG Items are going to somewhat reflect a similar response to the M1800 Items, but in most cases, the responses are not going to be the same because those items are assessed in a different way, meaning the GG Items require one thing while the M1800s require something different. I think you will find that this education will be extremely beneficial to your staff, and I truthfully hope that you use it as an education resource and honestly required education for any of your staff that will be completing OASIS, especially at start of care and resumption of care.
Thank you all for participating today. As we begin to enter this holiday season. I wish you all the best. I hope that you are beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel with this Public Health Emergency. I know some of you are still struggling desperately to keep staff etc. and we do hope that you are beginning to see that turn. Thank you again for participating today and we will be with you again soon.