According to the 21st Century Cures Act, every home health agency has to change the way they deliver services. This particular act mandates for states to create proper policies for EVV or Electronic Visit Verification especially if home care is funded from Medicaid.
Even though most agencies will think of it as an obstacle, others view it as the opportunity that will allow them to expand and improve their businesses.
The deadline for finding Electronic visit verification vendors is up to 1 January 2020, which means that you have to find a solution that will improve your service delivery and operational efficiency in the long run.
Let us start from the beginning:
What Is Electronic Visit Verification?
Similarly, as you probably know, EVV will capture:
- The time that visit started and ended
- That home care agency employee provided the proper services required by the law.
- The location and date of the provided service
- The name and ID of individuals who received it
Remember that EVV systems rely on GPS so that you can pinpoint when the caregiver arrived and left a particular location. Other systems combine telephone lines, which is important because caregivers have to call the office by using a landline.
The main reason why a new act mandates the implementation of EVV is to ensure that visits are taking place in proper times that patients are getting required care, and that Medicaid is billed properly and accurately.
In the last few years, Medicaid fraud increased rapidly, and the fact that the government recovered more than three billion dollars from companies and individuals that attempted to defraud is something that increased the implementation of EVVs.
They want to minimize the risks of fraud, which is why all home care agencies have to implement these requirements. You should check here to learn more about Electronic Visit Verification system.
Benefits of Electronic Visit Verification
Even though this particular change will help your agency to meet all legal requirements, you will also get other benefits that will help you along the way.
Remember that care delivery management will also improve the ability to reduce the paperwork and to provide the possibility to improve your business altogether.
These changes will lead to other possibilities including:
- Creating mobile apps that work perfectly when the individual has an internet connection without a landline phone
- Real-time visibility of caregiver locations
- Extensive data collection that you can report afterward
- Support for all employment relationships and caregivers
- Various types of visit verification by using electronic signatures, GPS coordinates, photos, and near-field communications.
- It will support the different types of workflows and visits that include delivery of unplanned care and unscheduled visits.
- Comprehensive visit documentation including forms with assessments, calculations, images, and tasks
- Accurate GPS-based mileage with support to meet both complex and simple mileage policies
- Properly optimized driving directions between points of interests and visits
- Reduce time consumption that includes trips to facilities, home visits and non-client activities
- Secure messaging among team members
If you decide to implement this particular solution to your home care agency, you will be able to benefit from its capabilities to meet all the requirements that your business requires. Other benefits that you will get with EVV technology include:
- Improve client outcomes and patient care
- Reduce late starts and missed visits
- Reduce paper documentation which is commonly associated with verification
- Reduce expenses with the use of convenient software products
- Increase overall productivity among your employees
What Should You Do?
Home health agencies feature numerous employees, clients, payers and many more. That is the main reason why you should find a proper EVV solution so that you can meet the requirements and reduce the hassle along the way.
It is not just about proof-of-visit, because in general, you will be able to reduce the hassle that comes with visitations, improve patient outcomes, quality of care and reduce the number of documents that caregivers have to compile.
Visit this link: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/hcbs/guidance/electronic-visit-verification/index.html and you will be able to see the latest regulations that include EVVs.
Since it will become mandatory soon enough, you should start with implementation so that you can prepare for new regulations that will affect your business in a positive manner.
However, you should also check the additional features that come with the Electronic Visit Verification so that you can ultimately boost the productivity of your business as well as customer satisfaction.
