Home Health Agency Consulting Expertise: A Guide to Industry-Leading Solutions
The Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) has long served as the foundation for assessing and improving the quality of care in the home health space. But starting July 1, 2025, its role is expanding in a big way.
CMS is rolling out all-payer OASIS data collection, meaning OASIS will now apply to nearly every patient—not just Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. While the shift brings exciting opportunities for standardization and improved care insights, it also introduces operational complexities that many care-at-home agencies might not be prepared for.
Here’s what you need to know—and how Maxwell TEC can help.
The Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) is a standardized tool that care-at-home agencies use to collect and report data about patient health and quality of care. It plays a central role in not only shaping each patient’s care plan but also in determining reimbursement rates and publicly reported quality outcomes.
OASIS assessments are conducted at multiple points throughout the care journey, including:
The most recent version, OASIS-E, went into effect in January 2023. This update aligned the tool more closely with the IMPACT Act of 2014, which calls for consistent data elements across all post-acute care settings to support coordinated care, outcome tracking, and value-based payment models¹.
Ultimately, OASIS is more than a data collection tool—it’s a clinical and operational compass that helps agencies track progress, uncover gaps, improve outcomes, and meet compliance requirements.
Until now, OASIS data collection has been limited to Medicare and Medicaid patients, meaning agencies were not required to complete OASIS assessments for patients with commercial insurance or other payer types.
That’s changing on July 1, 2025, when CMS will require all-payer OASIS data collection. This initiative broadens the scope of the tool, aligning with CMS’s larger push toward standardizing quality reporting across all care settings and populations².
This transition supports CMS’s broader data goals and will give providers more complete insight into population health trends across payer groups. However, all-payer OASIS assessments are expected to stretch staff capacity, overwhelm current documentation systems, and require significant training and process adjustments⁴.
This is a pivotal change for care-at-home providers, but agencies that prepare now will be better positioned to adapt smoothly and avoid operational bottlenecks.
The transition to all-payer OASIS is a strategic shift in how home health agencies deliver, document, and measure care. Acting early will enable agencies to minimize disruption and maintain care quality.
Here’s how to get started:
Training should go beyond a simple overview. Agencies must ensure that every clinician, quality leader, and operations team member understands:
Use interactive training sessions, competency checklists, and job aids to reinforce best practices.
Work closely with your EMR vendor to confirm:
Missing even one update here can cascade into compliance issues, payment delays, or care interruptions⁴.
Audit your current intake, documentation, and discharge processes to identify where OASIS is—or isn’t—being consistently completed. Pay attention to:
Use this transition as an opportunity to standardize and simplify your documentation practices.
Use your QA teams and Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) to:
This isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it” process. Agencies need to plan for ongoing optimization through the remainder of 2025 and beyond³.
This shift will involve clinical, operational, financial, and strategic teams. Executive and administrative leaders should be briefed on:
If your key team members are not aligned with the new OASIS changes, your entire agency could suffer. Start with leadership teams, then engage the rest of your staff to ensure everyone is aware of and ready for the new changes.
No major regulatory shift is without growing pains. The all-payer OASIS rollout is expected to trigger multiple pain points—especially for underprepared agencies.
Here’s where trouble is most likely to surface:
Your clinical staff already face documentation fatigue. Asking them to assess, score, and submit OASIS for an even larger patient population may cause:
Adding OASIS responsibilities to commercial patients will strain even the most efficient workflows. Without clear protocols, assessments may be:
If EMR systems aren’t fully optimized for the new rules, agencies risk:
Without role clarity and documentation expectations, collaboration can quickly stall. As interdisciplinary collaboration becomes more important under OASIS-E, agencies may face communication breakdowns between:
Longer, more complex assessments can affect patient satisfaction, especially if rushed or inconsistent. Patients may feel:
At Maxwell TEC, we understand that regulatory change—especially one as sweeping as the all-payer OASIS transition—can be overwhelming. That’s why our approach isn’t just about checking a compliance box. It’s about enabling agencies to thrive in the new data landscape, while keeping patient care at the center of everything.
Here’s how we support your agency through every stage of the transition:
We begin with a full-scale audit of your agency’s current documentation, staffing, and workflow processes. From there, we identify exactly where gaps exist and build a custom plan to ensure you're aligned with CMS guidance and your clinical goals.
Whether you're using a major platform or a specialized EMR, our consultants bridge the gap between tech and usability. We work alongside your vendor to:
This means your staff spends less time navigating systems—and more time focused on providing exceptional care.
Change starts with people. Our team delivers interactive training sessions that go beyond policy memos. We tailor content for different roles, from field clinicians and coders to QA managers and executives, covering:
Broader OASIS requirements mean greater data complexity. Maxwell TEC helps your agency turn data into actionable insights with:
We’re not here to drop a report and walk away. Maxwell TEC consultants embed themselves in your agency’s reality. We help solve real-time problems, adapt when things shift, and provide ongoing feedback so your OASIS implementation remains strong—weeks and months after go-live.
The move to all-payer OASIS opens a new chapter in how care at home is measured, reimbursed, and experienced. Agencies that view OASIS assessments as a burden will scramble to keep up. Agencies that strategically embrace the shift will be well-positioned to lead.
By expanding OASIS to cover every payer group, CMS is setting a new baseline for performance, equity, and transparency. That means:
But it also means greater opportunity to showcase your agency’s strengths, uncover gaps before surveyors do, and unlock insights that fuel better outcomes across the board.
Proactive agencies will:
Maxwell TEC enables home health agencies to do exactly that: lead proactively. Our strategic consulting and deep industry expertise empowers you to navigate all compliance changes, helping your agency succeed through changing regulatory mandates—including the transition to all-payer OASIS assessments.
This blog was originally published as a 3-part series, "Embrace the OASIS-E" by Leigh Massey, RN, JD, WOCN, CHC, CHPC, in Fall 2022, for Maxwell Healthcare Associates. The Maxwell TEC editorial team has since updated this article to ensure accuracy and relevance.