National Outcomes Measurement System (NOMS)

News

ASHA Plans to Monitor Changes to the Delivery of Skilled Nursing and Home Health Services with NOMS
Under the new Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM) and Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM), payment for skilled nursing and home health patients with speech-language pathology needs will be driven by the patient's clinical characteristics rather than the number of therapy minutes provided. ASHA will be using NOMS data to track changes in patient outcomes pre and post-implementation of these new payment models and will be working closely with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to monitor the delivery of SLP services to address any changes in patient outcomes.

NOMS Participants Can Now Transmit Data Electronically from their EMR
ASHA is now working with participating NOMS organizations and select practice management software vendors to integrate NOMS reporting into their speech-language pathology documentation to transmit data electronically to the NOMS registry. This new option of data collection eases reporting burden for clinicians. To find out more about obtaining a license agreement for electronic data submission for your organization or learn which vendors have worked with ASHA to build NOMS in their speech-language pathology documentation system, contact Tobi Frymark at Tfrymark@asha.org or view frequently asked questions related to electronic data submission.

Information for Prospective Participants

Information for Current Participants

What Is NOMS?

ASHA's National Outcomes Measurement System (NOMS) is a voluntary data collection system developed to illustrate the value of speech-language pathology services provided to adults and children with communication and swallowing disorders. SLPs working in healthcare or school settings can register their organization in the NOMS Adult and/or NOMS Pre-Kindergarten Component and become a participating data collection site.

The key to NOMS is the use of ASHA's Functional Communication Measures (FCMs). FCMs are a series of disorder-specific, seven-point rating scales designed to describe the change in an individual's functional communication and/or swallowing ability over time. Based on an individual's treatment plan/IEP, FCMs are chosen and scored by a certified speech-language pathologist on admission and again at discharge from SLP services to depict the amount of change in communication and/or swallowing abilities after speech and language intervention and submitted to ASHA's national registry. In addition to scoring the FCMs, SLPs also provide basic information on patient/client demographics and intervention characteristics (e.g., SLP diagnosis, frequency/intensity of treatment).

In exchange for submitting data to ASHA's national registry, SLPs and their participating facility(s) and/or school(s) have access to their data benchmarked by treatment setting and diagnosis against the national data and system data if applicable. Facilities may also run customized analyses of their data, as well as national data, using our web-based reporting system.

Through the use of NOMS, we are now beginning to demonstrate the value of speech-language pathology services and provide our members the needed tools to address the challenging questions posed by policy makers, third party payers, administrators and consumers alike.

To find out more about the benefits of NOMS, how to collect and submit data, frequently asked questions, and how to register your organization for data collection, see the "Information for Prospective Participants" in the resource box at the top of the page.