The Home Health Care Wire
Your source for CareVoyant and industry news. May 18, 2022
Key Performance Indicators for Home Care Agencies
Managing Home Care Agencies is a massive challenge in today's environment of staffing shortages, increased regulatory demands, and declining reimbursement. Improving the financial performance and operational efficiency of home care agencies must begin with an approach to managing by the numbers. Agencies must define benchmarks across clinical, financial, and administrative facets using clearly defined Key Performance Indicators and the acceptable level of performance.
As most Home Health Care agencies already provide Therapy Services as part of the Medicare Part A program, providing Outpatient Therapy Services at home under Medicare Part B or commercial payers will be a natural extension of services. Home Health Care agencies do not require any additional licenses to provide outpatient therapy services and the rapid rise in demand for in-home outpatient services provides additional revenue opportunities for agencies.
A software platform designed to handle both home health care and outpatient services will provide a unique advantage to agencies.
Improving operational efficiency in scheduling, clinical documentation, and quality assurance will impact the bottom line of Home Care Agencies. In this article, we discuss the five steps home care agencies can take to improve the utilization of clinicians' time. Home Care Agencies should look for a software platform that will provide the right tools to enhance clinicians' productivity.
Home Healthcare Industry News
Home care community takes key step on staffing woes
If there was ever a time to pull out the stops to tackle home care’s staffing shortage, it would be now. Company losses and reports of not being able to fill shifts as demand skyrockets makes this issue priority numero uno for the industry.
CMS Restores Optional Benefits for Independent Homecare Aids
Medicaid can directly pay for independent home health aides' benefits, including health insurance and skills training, according to a final rule the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued Thursday. The final rule allows State Medicaid agencies to provide home health aides not working with an agency employee benefit premiums and union dues deducted from their paychecks.
Legislation to Ensure Access to Acute Care at Home
In November 2020, when many hospitals were overwhelmed with patients due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Acute Hospital Care At Home waiver program to allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive acute-level health care services within their own homes. This waiver is set to expire at the end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency, which is currently set for July. CMS has promised providers a 60-day notice prior to the end of the 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.