Applying the Brief Interview for Mental Status in a Diverse Home Health Patient Population

In 2023, the Brief Interview for Mental Status (BIMS) was added to the Medicare-funded home health (HH) standard patient assessment (Outcomes and Assessment Information Set [OASIS]). This is the first validated cognitive screening tool in the OASIS, but no existing work reports on BIMS implementation in real-world HH clinical practice, overlap between BIMS and clinician-reported cognitive symptoms in the OASIS, or patient characteristics associated with lower BIMS scores.