Liz Saville Roberts: “This OASIS business, in regard to all the complaints we have heard, as I have indicated--I think I ought to go into that…”

“This OASIS business, in regard to all the complaints we have heard, as I have indicated--I think I ought to go into that a little bit more than explaining what the acronym is. OASIS is a system of records containing data on the physical, mental, and functional status of Medicare and Medicaid patients receiving care from home health agencies. HCFA tried to implement OASIS as a tool to help the agency improve the quality of care and form the basis for a new home health care prospective payment system. The problem is--and my colleague chaired the subcommittee and asked all the very pertinent questions--the collection of data is so burdensome and expensive for agencies, it invades the personal privacy of the patients. It must be collected for non-Medicare patients as well as those served by Medicare. Just yesterday, I learned that the whole OASIS information system in Kansas is not working; the computer system has failed. Agencies across the State are having a lot of difficulty in transmitting any kind of data. This burden is being felt by agencies all over the country.”