Drug Education on All Medications Provided to Patient/Caregiver During Short Term Episodes of Care

- Episodes in which the patient was not on any medications since the last OASIS assessment.
- Episodes ending in patient death. Note: The information needed to calculate this measure is not collected if the home health episode ends in death. The measure cannot be calculated in excluded cases due to data limitations.
- Long-term episodes (as indicated by the presence of a follow-up assessment between admission and transfer or discharge). Note: This exclusion was added at the request of NQF reviewers during initial consideration of the measure in 2008. To avoid excessive burden to agencies related to reviewing records longer than 60 days, this implementation measure reports on care provided since the last OASIS assessment. However, restricting the measure to care since the most recent OASIS assessment raised concerns among NQF Steering Committee members that measures might not accurately reflect care for longer-stay patients, as some interventions may have been implemented prior to the most recent OASIS assessment. In response, measure specifications were changed so that home care episodes that require a recertification are not included in publicly-reported measures on implementation of evidence-based practices. The reports that CMS provides for agency use in quality improvement activities include separate break-outs for short-term episodes and long-term episodes, as well as a combined “all episodes” measure.