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The action is one of several steps announced today to address interim recommendations from the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Regulatory Reform. Secretary Thompson created the panel of consumers, doctors and other health care professionals to help guide HHS' broader efforts to streamline unnecessarily burdensome or inefficient regulations that interfere with the quality of health care for Americans. The committee met today in Minneapolis.

"Over time, we've placed too many barriers between patients and their nurses, doctors and other health care providers," Secretary Thompson said. "This committee is helping us figure out some common-sense solutions to revise regulatory requirements to ensure that health care professionals can spend more time with patients and less time with paperwork."

Speaking at the Minneapolis meeting, Secretary Thompson said that he has asked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) immediately to submit a package for public comment to eliminate aspects of Medicare's OASIS required home health patient assessment that are duplicative or are not needed to promote quality care or to ensure accurate payment. CMS will propose cutting out two of 10 OASIS assessments and substantially reducing the number of required items collected in two other follow-up assessments. As a result of preliminary estimates, CMS believes that the time nurses and therapists spend on these assessments will be reduced by about 25 percent, with the total number of items collected reduced by 27 percent. While the bulk of work is done in three assessments, the most critical assessment -- the renewal assessment -- would be reduced 72 percent, from 92 items to 25 items.

Since 1999, Medicare has required home health agencies to complete the OASIS (Outcome ASsessment Information Set) assessment at regular intervals both to ensure Medicare pays appropriately and to assess and improve the quality of care provided by the home health agency. Committee members, however, made several recommendations for streamlining the assessment to achieve those goals more efficiently -- allowing home health agencies to spend more resources providing care to their patients.

Secretary Thompson also announced other steps to implement interim recommendations the committee has made:

• CMS will begin to print the 1-800-MEDICARE help line and www.medicare.gov Web address on beneficiaries' Medicare cards to make it quick and easy for them to get questions about their benefits answered.

• Later this year, Medicare will pilot test a new Web-based enrollment form for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics and other supplies. Suppliers will be able to complete the form online instead of on paper forms, allowing Medicare to review and act on the forms more quickly.

In addition, Secretary Thompson said HHS would carefully consider the committee's other recommendations and take appropriate steps to promote quality care for all Americans. The committee will send the Secretary a final report on its recommendations later this year.

At the same time, Secretary Thompson said HHS is developing a new Web-based system for doctors, pharmacists and other health care professionals to report medical errors and adverse events. The creation of this Web-based electronic reporting system will make the federal event reporting system easier and more effective by eliminating multiple paper forms with multiple identical requests for the same information.

Today's actions build on HHS' ongoing efforts to improve and streamline the regulatory process in order to improve access to quality health care and services. One year ago this month, Secretary Thompson created an HHS-wide Task Force on Regulatory Reform to conduct an ongoing review of HHS regulations and to oversee changes in regulations. In December 2001, he appointed members to the advisory committee to recommend actions to support these goals.

Throughout the year, HHS and its agencies have been following the committee's deliberations and have taken other concrete steps to address specific committee recommendations. Those actions include:

• Streamlining paperwork requirements for nurses and other clinical staff caring for Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes. Beginning July 1, nursing homes caring for Medicare beneficiaries can use a shorter assessment form to gather information needed to pay Medicare claims. The change will cut the time it takes to complete the assessment form from 90 minutes to 45 minutes, while continuing to collect data needed to measure quality of care in nursing homes.

• Clarifying requirements for hospitals to screen and treat emergency room patients. In May, CMS proposed common-sense improvements to ensure that patients with possible emergency conditions receive appropriate care as rapidly as possible. The proposal addresses multiple committee recommendations related to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

• Reducing the frequency that hospitals must gather detailed information from Medicare beneficiaries about other insurance. Hospitals will now be able to gather this Medicare Secondary Payer information -- used to make sure the correct insurer pays each health care claim -- just once every 90 days. This change allows hospitals to focus more time and resources on caring for patients instead of repeatedly collecting data.

"This committee is shining new light on our regulatory practices and leading the way for us to make improvements that ultimately will improve health care for all Americans," Secretary Thompson said. "I look forward to receiving more recommendations and a final report as we pursue these common-sense reforms."

For more information about the Secretary's regulatory reform initiatives, seewww.regreform.hhs.gov.

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