OASIS · CMS Q&As
M2010: CMS OASIS Q&As
4 questions CMS has answered, quoted whole from the CMS OASIS Q&As.
M2010 on the OASIS item lookup
M2010. Regarding M2010 - Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education, if the assessing clinician discovered the patient was taking a discontinued high-risk medication in error and then correctly educated the patient to discontinue it and follow the current medication orders, which did not include any high-risk medications. How should the clinician complete M2010? Our dilemma focused on whether the clinician should consider only those medications currently prescribed, or, in this case, include high-risk medications being taken but not presently prescribed for the patient’s use.
The current OASIS Guidance Manual M2010 Ch. 3 guidance states that M2010 – Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education identifies if clinicians instructed the patient and/or caregiver about all high-risk medications the patient takes. High-risk medications are those identified by an authoritative source as having considerable potential for causing significant patient harm when they are used erroneously. If the patient was taking a high-risk medication in error, as you described, and was educated by your staff to discontinue the medication as well as the special precautions they need to take and how and when to report a problem that occurs as a result of taking that medication, M2010 may be answered 1 - Yes.
[Q&A EDITED 05/22; ADDED & EDITED 06/14; Previously CMS Qtrly Q&A 04/14 Q10]
M2010. How would Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education for M2010 be impacted for patients living in assisted living where the medications are managed by facility staff?
When completing M2010 - Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education, for patients residing in an assisted living facility, it may be appropriate to educate the patient and/or the staff administering the medication on the topics included in each item. As with patients who live at home, the decision to direct the teaching to the patient, caregiver, or both should be made by the assessing clinician, based on the specific circumstances. For the purposes of selecting a response, the facility staff would be considered caregivers.
[Q&A EDITED 05/22; EDITED 10/16; ADDED 01/11; Previously CMS OCCB Q&A 01/10 Q19]
M2010. If agency staff other than the assessing clinician provided education to the patient/caregiver on high-risk medications, could this education include an office nurse giving the education over the phone to the patient?
A clinician other than the assessing nurse or therapist may provide drug education by phone to the patient and/or caregiver. When agency staff other than the assessing clinician provide medication education to the patient/caregiver, this information may be communicated to the assessing clinician for consideration so that the appropriate response for M2010 Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education may be selected.
[Q&A EDITED 05/22; EDITED 10/18; EDITED 10/16; EDITED 04/15; ADDED 01/11; Previously CMS OCCB Q&A 01/10 Q20]
M2010. When scoring M2010 - Patient/Caregiver High-Risk Drug Education, does the clinician need to follow up a response of 1 - Yes with a list of all high-risk medications they educated the patient/caregiver on, or is it acceptable to score this item as 1 - Yes either with "all" listed or is any additional documentation required at all?
It would be expected that instructions on ALL high-risk medications would be documented in the clinical record following agency policy.
[Q&A EDITED 05/22; EDITED 10/16; ADDED 04/15; Previously CMS Qtrly Q&A 10/14 Q12]
Also mentioned in
Source: CMS OASIS Q&As: Category 4 - OASIS Data Set: Forms and Items (March 2026), text extracted from the PDF with pdftotext, retrieved 2026-10-09. Works of the US Government are in the public domain.
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