The Home Health Care Wire
Your source for CareVoyant and industry news. March 16, 2022
Scheduling Efficiency – Key to Profitability of Home Care Agencies
Scheduling employee visits optimally is crucial to your Home Healthcare Agency’s financial success. A great scheduling software should allow you to balance multiple variables such as matching the right employee to the right patient, travel time optimization, client preferences, balancing overtime pay, etc.
Electronic visit verification was created to reduce fraud and ensure that people receive the documented care they need. EVV was designed to help verify that services billed for home healthcare are for actual visits made. The passing of the Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010 made provisions for reducing fraud and over-payments, requiring states to stop Medicaid payments to providers when there is credible evidence of fraud.
Home Care Agencies often utilize multiple software solutions to manage their operations as they provide multiple lines of service – Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical Personal Care, and Home Health). The software helps agencies monitor their caregivers – manage schedules, verify visits, track personnel time, manage health records, payments, accounting, and reporting. However, the use of multiple software for different lines of service is not only cumbersome but also an inefficient way of managing operations.
An integrated software platform across these multiple lines of service can provide one patient and employee record to alleviate many of these issues.
Home Healthcare Industry News
Home- and community-based services are a safe bet
If you like to gamble and know a thing or two about post-acute care, it seems pretty clear where to put your money at this point: home- and community-based services (HCBS). Two developments in recent days helped make that case. One is a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that the realignment of long-term services and supports (LTSS) toward HCBS keeps moving in that direction. In fiscal year 2019, the most recent year in which data are available, HCB LTSS made up 59% of total spending — the highest to date — while institutional LTSS comprised 41% of total spending. The gulf has continued to widen since fiscal year 2013, when HCBS surpassed institutional care in the share of LTSS dollars.
How the PE Nursing Home Crackdown Could Affect the Home Health Industry
Pushed by the White House, federal watchdogs have a new directive – cracking down on private equity in health care.
While they’ll largely be targeting nursing homes and PE investment as part of a recently unveiled senior care initiative from the Biden administration, there will likely be ripple effects in the home-based care space.
$1.5 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill Leaves Out Home Health Telehealth Reimbursement
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a comprehensive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package on Wednesday. The legislation, among other things, extends the temporary virtual care flexibilities that were put in place during the public health emergency.
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 care lines of service, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy.
CareVoyant functions – Intake, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, electronic visit verification, eMAR/eTAR, Financial, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, and bring operational efficiency.
For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.