The Home Health Care Wire
Your source for CareVoyant and industry news. October 10, 2024
5 Steps to Improve Clinician Utilization for Home Health Care Agencies
Home Health Care Agencies typically spend about 60% of their revenue on employee wages, and most of it will be for field employees providing services to patients. Declining reimbursements, continuing labor shortages, and increased labor costs make it imperative to improve the utilization of clinicians' time.
Improving operational efficiency in scheduling, clinical documentation, and quality assurance will impact the bottom line of Home Care Agencies. Home Care Agencies should look for a software platform that will provide the right tools to enhance clinicians' productivity.
More than 40 percent of older Americans regularly take five or more prescription drugs, and nearly 20 percent take ten or more, according to a 2020 report from the nonpartisan think tank Lown Institute. When over-the-counter medicines and supplements are factored in, the share of older adults popping five or more pills — a practice known as polypharmacy — shoots up to 67 percent.
When patients receive higher acuity care at home, medication management becomes a critical aspect of providing quality and safe care. The right Home Care Software and technology will help clinicians keep accurate lists of medications, educate patients & caregivers, monitor medication administration, and improve patient safety and outcomes.
Patients often take for granted the importance of understanding the what, when, why, and how of the care they receive. Caregivers are no less guilty – unintentionally, they might miss that a patient has tuned out of a procedural explanation due to a lack of comprehension.
Expanded health literacy in both caregivers in patients can better patients’ health outcomes, decrease emergency room visits by ensuring people seek out preventative care, reduce the number of dosing errors, help patients manage chronic conditions, and increase patient satisfaction.
Home Healthcare Industry News
CMS to Provide Hurricane Helene Public Health Emergency Accelerated and Advance Payments to Medicare Fee-for-Services Providers and Suppliers
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking action to support providers and suppliers impacted by Hurricane Helene within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster zones, under the President’s major disaster declarations.
‘A Deteriorating Industry’: What Home Health Provider Margins Actually Look Like
An analysis of cost reporting data – that considers both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage (MA) payments – shows that providers are generally not sitting atop a hill of money. Instead, they are struggling to stay above water.
Harris proposes Medicare pay for home health care for first time
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday proposed broadening Medicare benefits to cover home health care for the first time, as she seeks to appeal to Americans caring for both children and aging parents.
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.