In December 2016, President Obama signed a new law. This law is designed to inject higher efficiency, drive cost reduction and improve care quality to the personal care and home healthcare industry.
The 21st Century Cures Act is aimed at streamlining the U.S. healthcare industry by increasing efficiency and improving the quality of care to citizens. The section 12006 of the bill encourages the state agencies to implement electronic visit verification system (EVV System) for personal care services and home health care services under Medicaid.
The Federal Incentives
The states are encouraged to design, develop and implement an EVV System, and the law entitles up to 90 percent federal funding for doing so and subsequently, with up to 75 percent federal funding for operations and& maintenance. Federal funding is available for all the states that put in place their own EVV System or uses a contractor.
And by not implementing an EVV System, the states run the risk of losing up to 1 percent federal medical assistance.
Why EVV?
Apart from the incentives provided by the federal government, the state agencies can widely benefit from an EVV System. An EVV System has a positive impact overall and is known to drive efficiency, reduce cost and mitigate fraud.
How EVV Systems Work
EVV stands for electronic visit verification. Quoting from the mandate:
The term “electronic visit verification system” means, with respect to personal care services or home health care services, a system under which visits conducted as part of such services are electronically verified with respect to
(i) the type of service performed;
(ii) the individual receiving the service;
(iii) the date of the service;
(iv) the location of service delivery;
(v) the individual providing the service; and
(vi) the time the service begins and ends.
So, a modern EVV System just acts as a time and attendance verification tool for the in-home caregivers/workers by enabling them to “clock in” and “clock out” to record time and the location at which the care services were rendered. The EVV System also should provide the ability for the caregivers to record additional information pertaining to the type of care and the care provided itself.
Benefits of EVV System
Electronic Visit Verification Systems offers a reliable, dependable and error-free means for care providers and home care workers to capture care delivery data in real-time while they are providing the services. An EVV System brings in loads of benefits such as digital verification of the visits as outlined in the care plan, automates time and attendance of caregivers, provides a paperless, digital means to record the type of care and services provided to the patient. Since the data is recorded digitally the program administrators not only can verify and validate the visit and the type of care but also will be able to pull-up various reports and analytics to drive efficiency in the process.
About allGeo EVV Platform
Abaqus, Inc. is a provider of a powerful platform, allGeo, for EVV solution for in-home care providers. allGeo leverages the advancements in the modern technology in the smartphones/sensors, apps, location-based services, and cellular communication to provide you with a scalable and a robust in-home care workforce solution to help meet EVV requirements for Medicaid compliance.
With allGeo, the healthcare providers simply clock in and out from the place of care. The system automatically verifies the visit of the location via geofencing technology. The caregiver easily captures additional information via the digital forms on the mobile app. The mobile forms can be customized to suit your needs and business workflow. The system also offers powerful, customized reporting for time and hours (for payroll), mileage, costing needs, etc.
Additionally, the allGeo platform also supports a powerful IFTTT (If-this-then-that) workflow rules engine. The IFTTT rules engine translates real-world events to trigger business actions.
With this, you can define your business workflow and allgeo can automate field operations using real-world triggers involving people, place and time. The real-world events that trigger automatic actions can be highly customized. For example, many of our customers that provide home care services use the IFTTT customization to Automate caregiver safety and threat alerts.
allGeo is a trusted EVV solution partner for some the leading care providers including the home healthcare staffing industry for Medicaid compliance.
Want to learn more or have any questions? We’d love to hear from you, contact any EVV solutions expert today:
John Cunningham: jcunningham@abaq.us | Shaili Jain: sjain@abaq.us | Or Call us at 415-496-9436
