Pain is an important symptom for health care providers to investigate and to treat. Home health staff should determine whether a patient is having pain that interferes with activity at each visit. If the patient is having pain, they (or someone on their behalf) should tell the home health staff. The home health staff also should observe the patient to determine whether pain is present, even if it is not reported. Efforts can then be made to find and treat the cause and make the patient more comfortable. If pain that interferes with activity is not treated, the person may not be able to perform daily routines, may become depressed, or have an overall poor quality of life. Pain may also be a sign of a new or worsening health problem.
If patents have less pain interfering with activity, it may mean that the home health agency is doing a good job in assessing and treating their pain. Some patients' pain will be extremely difficult to adequately treat, even though the home health care agency provides good care.
This is one of 41 OASIS-based measures for which Medicare-certified home health agencies receive performance reports from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The reports cover Medicare and Medicaid adult non-maternity patients and compare each agency's rates to national reference rates and to the agency's own rates in the previous year. The reports provide home health agencies with information they can use to improve quality of care by targeting care practices that influence specific patient functioning and health status, as part of a comprehensive quality improvement approach.
This measure is also one of ten Home Health Quality Initiative measures; a resource to help consumers compare home health agencies, and they are intended to motivate home health agencies to improve care and to inform discussions about quality between consumers and clinicians.
