Scenario:
Mrs. Smith came home last night from rehab after having an exacerbation of her coronary artery disease and suffering an acute NSTEMI three weeks ago. You are doing the start-of-care (SOC) assessment today. The discharge paperwork from the rehab indicates the patient’s height is 5 feet, 6 ½ inches and her weight on the day of discharge home was 155.2 pounds.
Question: How should you answer M1060 (Height and weight)?
A. Enter “67” into height box and “155” into weight box. Take care to use inches for the height and pounds for the weight. Round numbers using basic math principles — rounding 0.5 and higher up to the next whole number and 0.4 and lower rounding down/dropping off.
B. Ask the patient if these are the correct height and weight for her. If she says yes, enter “67” and “155” into the height and weight box.
C. Ask the patient to stand up. Weigh the patient and measure her height using the appropriate measuring devices while in the home doing the SOC. Enter the results you obtain into the boxes.
D. Enter dashes into both boxes because you are in a hurry and have three more SOCs to complete today.
Answer and rationale:
The correct answer is C.
CMS instructs us that we are not to use data from another facility to answer this item, nor are we allowed to use patient “self-reporting” of their height and weight. The CMS expectation is that as part of our comprehensive assessment of the patient, we are to weigh and measure our patients at SOC and resumption of care following an established agency policy.