Is your agency using our Assessment Comparison Report? This report is available for every follow-up OASIS assessment after a Start of Care (Recertification, ROC or other follow-up). The Assessment Comparison Report compares the current assessment to all of the previous assessments for a patient. You can see if your patients are improving in key areas at a glance as you are working toward discharge.

The report is color-coded so that you can quickly see if a patient has declined in status, remained the same or improved. When you load an OASIS assessment in Home Health Edition, you will find the Assessment Comparison Report under “Reports” (the same place where you find your OASIS Analysis Report).

Did you know that PPS Plus can calculate your costs to compare with your reimbursement so that you can see where you stand financially with an assessment at the outset of an episode of care?

When you load an assessment to look at your reports, you will have a navigation tree at the top left of your screen with three folders. Open the folder designated as “PPS Plus.” You will see a list of folders, one of which is “Ordered Services and Supplies”. Select this folder and you will be able to enter the projected number of visits for each discipline.

At the bottom right of your screen you will see your HHRG, HIPPS, case-mix wt. and reimbursement. Hover over your reimbursement with your cursor and you will then see your reimbursement amount, costs and a profit/loss for the episode.

In our continuing effort to provide our clients with reports that will assist them with monitoring the quality of their patient care, we have added a new report with the latest software update.

We have released the Emergent Care Report which you will find under the PBQI/OBQM/OBQI Reports section in Home Health Edition. It lists the reasons for emergent care and the transfers and discharges when they occur. The report also shows the patient’s name, type of assessment, hospital admission, clinician, and branch name.

PPS Plus Software has released another report for Home Health Edition 6.0. This report, which is called the 2012 CMS Rate Impact Report, can be found under Operational Reports in HHE and will give agencies a preview of the CMS CY 2012 National Standardized Episode Payment Rate Reductions. In the report, monthly reimbursement is shown for 2010 and 2011, as well as projected reimbursement for 2012. The projected reimbursement for 2012 is based on similar agency caseload and case mix weights that the agency experienced in 2011. You do not set a date range for this particular report, just click on “Get Report Data” and it will populate the report for you. Remember: you can always customize a report by utilizing your filter options.

If you aren't familiar with the "ICD-9 Code Usage" report, you should give it a try. Not only does it give you the Primary Diagnoses for your assessments, but it also gives you Secondary Diagnoses as well. It shows the frequency of the use of each of the codes along with subtotals by the Diagnostic Group.

To run the report, click the "Reports" button in the lower-left hand corner. Then click the "+" by "Diagnosis Reports." Select "ICD-9 Code Usage" under that. To the right, enter a date range (Tip: Keep it small; there can a lot of codes used in a short period of time.). Then click the "Get Report Data" button. The report will appear below. As with all reports, you can narrow the results by using the Filters.

In the second edition of Tips, Tricks & Tidbits for Home Health Professionals, Jennifer Warfield, RN, BSN, HCS-D, COS-C, expands on the clinical and ICD-9-CM coding knowledge that she shared in the first.

The new book includes everything you loved from the first edition and even more helpful home health tips to get you through another year in the industry. From updated coding scenarios and an overview of the 2012 Final Rule to a chapter on wound classifications and a V code reference guide, you'll want to make sure this book is handy whenever and wherever you code your patients.

Tips, Tricks & Tidbits for Home Health Professionals, 2^nd Ed. will be available for purchase beginning October 3, 2011!

We just released a revised report that your clinicians will truly like and find user friendly. We had several of our customers inform us that their clinician's didn't want to spend time figuring out what each M Item was on the Assessment Comparison Report so now it's written out in the header next to the M Item (for example: M1350-Skin Lesion, M1340-Surgical Wound, etc.). Now when you look at your Assessment Comparison Report under Patient Specific Reports in Home Health Edition, your clinicians, supervisors, etc. can decipher it much more quickly. We listen to our customers time and time again which has made for the best OASIS analysis software in the marketplace.

by Julie Bond, RN
Account Executive

Did you know that the "Document Options" tab above Home Health Edition reports houses great tools available for you to take advantage of? One of the most valuable capacities is saving/e-mailing reports as an Excel, Word or PDF file. While a report is open, you can actually save/e-mail an Excel, Word or PDF file of that report to a nurse in the field to let him/her review discrepancies before getting back to you with comments/edits. This can save a lot of time, which home care professionals seem to have less and less of these days. So take advantage of this cool feature as much as you can. The "Document Options" tab is in the ribbon located right above your OASIS Analysis report. It is also in the ribbon above your clinical and financial reports, but just beneath the "Report Data Options" tab. If you need help, just give us a call and we will be more than happy to assist you.

by Angela Brown, LPN
Account Executive

Located in the Operational Reports folder, the Vision Therapy Eligibility report is available to assist in identifying which of your patients may benefit from low vision evaluations or low vision therapy sessions.

As clinicians, we understand that low vision is classified as a disease process that can be covered under the conditions of participation and qualify since they are being conducted by an Occupational Therapist that is trained in low vision rehabilitation. There are so many clinical factors that play a role in vision impairment. Some of these are:

• Diseases of the eye
• A diagnosis of diabetes
• Mismanagement of medications
• Fear of and history of falls
• Even a decrease in weight due to the inability to locate food items on their plate

Low vision also impacts activities of daily living, safety environmental issues and even causes mood states such as confusion and anxiety.

Marking OASIS item M1200 as either a one or two will trigger a list of patients within the software that should be considered for specialized programs. The Vision Therapy Eligibility report is an excellent resource that will enhance accurate assessments and documentation and help you to identify proper treatments for patients.

Recently, improvements have been made to the suite of reports that show Process Measures and Outcome Measures.

The "Process Measures Met - Detail View" and "Process Measures Unmet - Detail View" reports have been combined into one. The consolidated report has "Met" and "Unmet" columns with checkmarks for each assessment. If you'd rather only see one or the other, you can do so by using filters. Simply add a filter where "Met = True" or "Unmet = True."

The "Decline in Quality Measure - Detail" report has been replaced with "Home Health Quality Measures - Detail View." This shows the Outcome Measures and has columns for "Improved," "Declined," and "No Change." This new format makes it clear to see which assessments are causing your publicly reported Outcomes to go up or down.

Keep in mind that in order to be eligible for these reports, PPS Plus must have the beginning and ending assessments of an episode of care. So it's important to import/enter the Transfers and Discharges into PPS Plus.