In December 2016, then-president Obama signed a new law: the 21st Century Cures Act. The law was strongly supported by both senates and the house of representatives and easily passed. It covers a wide array of subjects related to health care services and aims to inject higher efficiency, drive cost reduction and improve care quality. Part of the bill, in section 12006, encourages the state agencies to implement an electronic visit verification system (EVV System) for personal care services and home health care services under Medicaid.
What is Electronic Visit Verification (EVV)
An Electronic Visit Verification system (EVV) for home care and personal care services provides a means to verify visits conducted as a part of services provided related to:
The type of service
Date of service provided
Location of the service delivery
Service provided by (caregiver’s details)
Time details – service start and end times
Types of Electronic Visit Verification System (EVV System)
Electronic visit verification systems work on different underlying technologies, which form the basis for their classification. The popular types are:
Biometric recognition
Telephony
Mobile technology (Phones & Tablets)
Which EVV type to choose?
Let us take a look at the various types of EVV systems and see how they work:
The Biometric Recognition
This system uses a dedicated hardware, using caregiver’s scans of their fingerprint or recording voice samples to register their visit. These devices need to be installed in the care recipient’s premises.
While this method serves the purpose, here are some downsides that need to be considered: the biometric devices are costly, each care recipient has to have a dedicated biometric device installed. Also, since these devices are required to be placed in the recipient’s premises, it can be seen as an inconvenience.
Telephony
This system requires the landline phones available of the care recipient’s address for visit verification. Here’s is how it works: the caregiver makes a call using the landline telephone at the recipient’s place to record the visit.
Based on a recent National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), it’s found that almost half of the US households do not have a landline. Smartphones have become a companion for most people in the United States while landline phones are rapidly losing relevance. Thus, the declining popularity of landlines makes this option historical and therefore a weak contender as an EVV solution.
Mobile Technology (Phones & Tablets)
This method of EVV option uses the caregiver’s own mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – enabling them to record visits via an app (for EVV), text or phone call. Smartphones and tablets are constantly evolving and are becoming more powerful, and with increasing maturation and affordability of key technologies like mobile apps, devices, sensors, and cloud technology, mobile technology offers the newest and the most future-proof EVV option.
A mobile technology-driven EVV solution allows you to do more than just verify visits. So, apart from visit verification, any GPS enabled phones and tablets can be used to do some of the following functions:
Serve as a communication channel between field and office
Provide Timekeeping for a caregiver for payroll
Track mileage and other costs
Generate reports for documentation and audit
Capture data from the field: signature, notes, photos and more
Monitor caregiver’s safety
Serve as a real-time broadcast/alerts channel for one-to-one or one-to-many
To sum up, EVV using mobile devices and apps present a seamlessly fast, easy, secure, error-free and a future-proof verification solution for both our customers and their caregivers.
Click here to try allGeo’s Automatic Electronic Visit Verification System. If you’re looking for an EVV solution for your agency talk to our EVV expert today!
John Cunningham: jcunningham@abaq.us | Shaili Jain: sjain@abaq.us | Or Call us at 415-496-9436
