Home health quality improvement coordinator job description
A home health quality improvement coordinator checks charts and OASIS assessments before errors reach Medicare or a surveyor. They run the quality program, called QAPI. They track falls, infections and complaints, and teach nurses and therapists to fix the errors that keep coming back.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, home health care agencies · BLS, May 2025
We're hiring a Quality Improvement Coordinator to run our quality program day to day. You'll review OASIS assessments and charts before they're submitted, track incidents, infections, and complaints, run our quality assessment and performance improvement (QAPI) program, and keep us ready for surveys.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Audit a sample of charts each month for OASIS accuracy, signed orders, visit frequency, and documentation that supports billing.
Run the QAPI program: collect data, report results, and lead the improvement projects leadership and the governing body approve.
Track falls, infections, incidents, and complaints, look for patterns, and report them to leadership.
Monitor quality measures, Home Health CAHPS (HHCAHPS) patient survey results, and Care Compare star ratings.
Track our scores under the expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model, which adjusts our Medicare payments.
Run mock surveys and help the Administrator prepare for state and accreditation visits.
Teach clinicians how to avoid the documentation and OASIS errors you find.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Review new OASIS assessments before submission and send corrections to clinicians.
Log new incidents and infections and check that follow-up happened.
Pull reports from [your EMR] on late documentation and open orders.
Meet with the Director of Nursing on audit findings and staff education.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
OASIS errors found before submission: [your target].
Chart audit pass rate: [your target].
Improvement projects completed: [your target].
Repeat findings across audits: [your target].
Mock survey results: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
Active [State] RN license [or another clinical license you accept for this role].
[2+] years of home health clinical, OASIS review, or quality experience.
Detailed knowledge of OASIS guidance and the Medicare home health Conditions of Participation.
Comfortable with spreadsheets and reports from [your EMR].
Handles patient records under HIPAA.
6. Preferred Experience
COS-C or HCS-O certification for OASIS, or HCS-D for diagnosis coding.
Has run QAPI projects or mock surveys before.
Infection prevention training or experience.
7. Physical Requirements
Sitting at a computer for long periods, reading charts and reports.
Occasional home visits with clinicians for audits.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Office-based in [branch city], with travel to other branches.
Regular hours: [Monday through Friday].
Longer days before surveys and quality reporting deadlines.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new quality improvement coordinator gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
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What makes the home health quality improvement coordinator job different
In home health, the care happens in homes the coordinator rarely sees. The charts and the OASIS data are the window, and Medicare uses the same OASIS data for quality reports, Care Compare and payment.
QAPI has federal rules
Medicare requires a QAPI program that covers every service, including care given under contract. It has to run on data, OASIS data included. It must track harm to patients, find the cause and act to stop it, and fix any safety threat right away. The governing body approves how often and in how much detail data are collected. Each project needs a written reason and progress you can measure. Source: 42 CFR 484.65: Quality assessment and performance improvement (Cornell LII).
OASIS has a 30-day clock
Each completed OASIS assessment has to reach CMS within 30 days of the date the clinician completed it, and the data must match the patient's status at that time. A pre-submission review has to fit inside that window, with time left for the clinician to make corrections. A review queue that backs up can push assessments past the deadline. Source: 42 CFR 484.45: Reporting OASIS information (Cornell LII).
CMS's audit examples name this job
CMS's OASIS manual suggests the QI coordinator audit records each month. Pull at least five start of care and five discharge records, and compare the OASIS with the other notes from that week. It also suggests audit visits each quarter. A supervisor or peer scores OASIS next to the clinician, and the coordinator compares the two. CMS says these are examples, not rules, so your policy sets the method. Source: CMS: OASIS-E2 Guidance Manual, effective April 1, 2026 (PDF).
The patient survey is hands-off
To get the full Medicare rate update, agencies that serve enough patients must hire an approved vendor for the HHCAHPS patient survey. Each month the agency sends the vendor a full patient list. CMS says not to sway patients in any way about how to answer. Agencies also can't post survey data or comments, even with names removed. If the vendor misses a quarterly data deadline, there is no extension, so the coordinator checks the submission reports. Source: HHCAHPS Survey: HHA responsibilities and FAQs (April 2026, PDF).
Record rules give the audit its checklist
Every chart entry must be legible and complete, and signed or securely entered, dated and timed by its author. A discharge summary goes to the follow-up practitioner within five business days, and a transfer summary within two business days. Records are kept five years after discharge, or longer where state law says so. Each of those makes a clean yes-or-no line on an audit tool. Source: 42 CFR 484.110: Clinical records (Cornell LII).
How much home health quality improvement coordinators make
The closest BLS group for home health quality improvement coordinators is registered nurses. Registered nurses who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $40.83 an hour ($84,930 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below the $97,550 median for registered nurses in all industries. About 198,180 of the 3,379,720 registered nurses in that survey work for home health care agencies.
Often salaried, sometimes hourly. Expect to pay close to what your experienced RN case managers make, since many candidates come from that job.
Home health care agencies
$84,930$84,930 median Middle half $78,250–$101,210 10th–90th $66,350–$126,090
All industries
$97,550$97,550 median Middle half $80,330–$112,350 10th–90th $68,940–$137,470
$50k$75k$100k$125k$150k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Home health care agencies
$66,350
$78,250
$84,930
$101,210
$126,090
All industries
$68,940
$80,330
$97,550
$112,350
$137,470
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Knows OASIS item guidance well enough to defend a score to the nurse who chose it
Reads a chart fast and notices what doesn't match from one note to the next
Corrects clinicians kindly and specifically, without making them defensive
Builds simple spreadsheets and trend charts from EMR reports
Writes an improvement project with a goal, a measure and a date
Keeps what staff say in an incident review confidential
Teach these on the job
Your EMR's quality and audit reports
Your audit tools and sampling method
iQIES and the CMS reports on your agency's data
Your HHCAHPS vendor's portal and monthly file
Your incident, infection and complaint logs
The coordinator works in the EMR's OASIS review queue and reports, CMS's iQIES system for OASIS records and quality reports, the HHCAHPS vendor's portal and a lot of spreadsheets. Ask candidates to score a sample OASIS item set in the interview and explain any item they'd question.
Home health quality improvement coordinator interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
Most of these targets come from your own audit history, so run a few months of audits with the new tools before you lock the numbers in.
OASIS errors found before submission
Corrections sent back to clinicians during pre-submission review, counted per assessment and by item. A falling count shows the teaching works; a jump on one item can point to new guidance or a new hire.
Chart audit pass rate
Charts that pass every line on your audit tool, out of all charts reviewed that month. Use the same tool and sampling method every month, or the trend can't be compared.
Improvement projects completed
Projects the governing body approved that met their goal and were measured again later to show the gain held. Keep each project's reason, data and result in one file for surveyors.
Repeat findings across audits
Audit items failed again by the same clinician or team after coaching. Track them by item so you can tell whether the training, the form or the EMR screen needs to change.
Mock survey results
Findings from your own mock survey, scored against the Conditions of Participation the way surveyors score them. Compare each round with the last one and with your most recent state or accreditation survey.
Career path
RN case managerLearns OASIS and Medicare charting in the field.
Quality improvement coordinatorReviews OASIS and charts and runs the QAPI program.
Director of quality and complianceOversees quality, OASIS review and compliance for every branch.
AdministratorTakes on the whole certified agency, surveys included.
Does a home health QI coordinator have to be a nurse?
Federal rules don't name this job. CMS's OASIS manual lets agency policy set who may review OASIS or teach it. Only RNs and therapists can complete the assessments, though. A reviewer with one of those licenses speaks the same language as the staff. The template's required line is an RN license, or another clinical license you accept, plus home health OASIS or quality experience.
How much does a home health quality improvement coordinator make?
Registered nurses who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $40.83 an hour ($84,930 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $78,250 and $101,210 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
What changed with OASIS-E2?
OASIS-E2 took effect April 1, 2026. CMS calls it a minor update. It dropped the COVID-19 vaccine item. It swapped the old transportation and gender items for a new transportation item and a sex item. It added language, hearing and vision to the resumption of care time point, and reworded the answers for falls since start or resumption of care. Retrain staff on those items and check that your EMR runs the new version.
How do we fix an OASIS error after it's submitted?
Correct the clinical record under your policy, then send the fix to CMS through iQIES. Clinical errors and mistakes in non-key fields take a modification record. If a key field is wrong, or the assessment event never happened, you inactivate the record instead, and for a key field error you submit a new one. Agencies have 24 months from the assessment's target date. Only fixes sent before the quarterly correction deadline show up on Care Compare.
How is the QI coordinator different from the director of nursing?
The director of nursing runs care: assignments, referrals, clinical calls and staff. The QI coordinator checks the results: audits, data, incident trends and the QAPI program. They work side by side. The coordinator brings audit findings to the director each week, and the director decides who needs coaching. Keeping the jobs apart means someone who doesn't manage the staff reviews their work.
