Home Care Services Overview

Home Care Services are a wide range of services, skilled and non-medical, provided at patients’ homes or where the patient is living. Home Care Services enable patients to live independently and safely at home instead of a Skilled Nursing Facility or a Group Home. By providing care at home, patient satisfaction and outcomes significantly improve while the overall cost of care reduces. In addition, home Care Services can help patients who need long-term assistance with the activities of daily living recover from short hospitalization, who have special needs and ongoing disabilities. Nurses, Therapists, Medical Social Workers, Home Health Aides, and Personal Care Workers provide long-term or short-term care for patients based on their needs.

Home care can be the key to providing the highest quality of life possible while aging in place. It can improve patient independence while providing the necessary care in the comfort and familiar environment of the home.

What are the types of Home Care?

The following are some of the types of home care services provided to patients at home.

Assistance with Activities of Daily Living like bathing, dressing, cooking, etc.,
Companionship services
Short term Skilled Nursing Services
Wound Care
Therapy and rehabilitative services
Long-term ongoing skilled nursing services such as Medication Administration, Tracheostomy, Ventilator, etc.,

We can group Home Care Services under four major categories or lines of service.

Personal Care Services are services provided to patients to assist with Activities of Daily Living such as bathing, dressing, preparing meals, or other household tasks.

These services can also be called as Non-Medical Services or Companion Care.

Personal Care is usually paid by the patient (Private Pay) or Private Insurances, or Medicaid.

Home and Community Based Services.jpg — Home and Community Based Services

Home and Community-Based Services are personal care services provided for patients with Medicaid or Medicaid Waiver programs. Medicaid or Medicaid Waiver programs usually pre-authorize home and Community-Based Services.

Private Duty Nursing Services are long-term skilled and hourly services provided to medically fragile pediatric or adult patients with chronic illness or disability.

Some examples of Private Duty Services are Medication Administration, Treatment Administration, Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Tracheostomy Care, Ostomy Care, Feeding Tube Care, or Catheter Care.

Medicaid or Medicaid Waiver Programs usually pay private Duty Nursing Services. They also will need a Plan of Care signed by a Physician.

Home Health Services are short, visit-based skilled services for adult patients recovering from a hospital stay, illness, or injury.

Some home health examples are Wound Care, Nursing Care, Therapy Services, Medical Social Work, or Home Health Aide services.

Medicare or Medicare Advantage Programs usually pay home Health Services. They also will need a Plan of Care signed by a Physician.

Home Health Care Agencies

Home Care Services are usually provided by Home Care Agencies at patients’ homes. Home Care Agencies are organizations, for-profit or not-for-profit, that are primarily engaged in providing skilled or paraprofessional home health care to individuals in out-of-hospital settings, such as private homes, boarding homes, hospices, shelters, and so on. Its policies must be established and supervised by professional personnel, including physicians and one or more registered nurses. It must maintain clinical records on all patients. In states with laws licensing such agencies, it must be licensed pursuant to such laws and approved as meeting the standards established for such licensing.

Home Care Agencies may provide home care services – Personal Care, Private Duty Nursing, or Medicare Certified Home Health Services.

Each type or line of home care services has unique, different, and demanding operational and regulatory requirements. Home Health Services are usually covered under Medicare with additional scheduling and billing requirements. Personal Care Services and HCBS are paid patients (Private Pay), private insurance, Medicaid, or Waiver programs. Scheduling, authorization, and billing requirements vary based on the payer. Private Duty Nursing Services require nurses to provide skilled continuous care in longer shifts creating unique scheduling and billing challenges.

A Home Care Agency providing multiple services faces many challenges to meet disparate operational and regulatory requirements for these services. A Home Care Software platform that helps the agency meet these challenges will be essential for the efficient operation and growth of the agency.

Challenges for Home Care Agencies with multiple lines of service

Even though there are many software solutions available for Home Care Agencies, most of these solutions are designed for only one type of service – Home Health or Personal Care. As a result, home Care Agencies providing more than one line of service will have to use multiple software solutions or work around the inefficiencies of using software that cannot handle the unique requirements of the services provided. This leads to many operational inefficiencies impacting the quality of care, patient satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cost of operations.

The following are some of the challenges for Home Care Agencies providing multiple lines of service.

Users will have to log in and enter the same data multiple times leading to data entry errors
Patient Intake, Clinical, and Billing information are stored in multiple databases.
Fragmented employee and schedule records leading to scheduling conflicts and increased overtime cost
Scheduling inefficiencies of using a visit based software for hourly scheduling and authorization management
Potential loss of revenue from uncovered visits are shifts
Potential unbillable services by providing services over authorizations
Limited or no visibility of clinical information across multiple lines of services (Private Duty Nursing, Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, Home Health) leading to a decline in Quality of Care
Separate invoices and statements to patients from the same agency
Lack of consolidated reports for the entire agency
Significant manual efforts to manage disparate requirements for different lines of services.

Benefits of a comprehensive, integrated Software Platform

A comprehensive, integrated software platform that can handle different services provided by the home care agency is essential for operational efficiency, quality of care, and patient/employee satisfaction. Therefore, Home Health Care agencies should take a holistic view of their needs for a software platform before selecting a solution. Using an integrated Home Care Software platform to meet all the requirements of a home care agency will provide significant benefits and efficiencies.

The following are the benefits of using a comprehensive and integrated home care agency software platform that can handle multiple lines of service.

Keep Intake, authorization, scheduling, clinical, and billing information in one database for all lines of service
ONE patient and ONE employee record all lines of service
The transition of care from one service to another without re-entering information
Provide multiple services concurrently with ONE patient and ONE employee records
Improve the quality of care by providing visibility to clinical information across lines of service (Private Duty Nursing, Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, Home Health)
Handle unique requirements of PDN like eMAR, eTAR, and Continuous Care while handling PDGM requirements for Home Health
Efficient management of schedules and overtime across multiple lines of service
Limit potential loss of revenue from uncovered visits are shifts
Limit or eliminate possible unbillable services by providing services over authorizations
Provide consolidated invoices and statements to patients from the same agency
Handle multiple payers – Medicare, Managed Care, Insurance, Private Pay
Consolidated reports for the entire agency
Limited or no manual efforts to manage disparate requirements for different lines of services

Conclusion

The benefits of using an integrated Home Care Software platform far outweigh using multiple software designed for a specific line of service. Instead, agencies should look for software that will meet most of the requirements, if not all, for all lines of service. For example, with the power of ONE database, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, a Home Care Agency can reduce the cost but also eliminate redundant processes while getting unified clinical, administrative, and financial views.

CareVoyant’s integrated software platform for Home Care Agencies brings you the power of ONE database – creating ONE patient and ONE employee record across multiple lines of service – Private Duty Nursing, Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, and Home Health. As a result, agency administrators can schedule caregivers better, improve quality of care, reduce costs, optimize reimbursements, and improve operational efficiency.

ABOUT CAREVOYANT

CareVoyant is a leading provider of cloud-based integrated enterprise-scale home health care software that can support all home-based services under ONE Software, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, making it a Single System of Record. We support all home based services, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy at Home.

CareVoyant functions – Intake, Authorization Management, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, eMAR/eTAR, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), Billing/AR, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and agency bottom line.

For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.