If you’re in the home health business, chances are you’ve at least heard of EVV. So what is it and why should you care?

EVV stands for Electronic Visit Verification. Essentially, it is a technology that checks where and when a caregiver begins services for a client and when they check out. This provides a breadcrumb trail that provides the basis for billing.

The need arose from the abuse of some providers who inflated and made up the time sheets. It has become all too easy for an unethical agency owner to record false hours of service and then bill Medicaid/Medicare for the services. The result was that the agencies fraudulently or improperly collected billions of dollars.

Now, with EVV technology, there is no question that a caregiver is at the location from which they checked in (via GPS or registered landlines). You can imagine the millions of dollars this has already saved the healthcare system.

New regulations require EVV

Many states have already begun requiring electronic visit verification for registered agencies, but the EVV requirement is poised to become a national mandate. In the last two months of President Obama’s term, he signed the 21st Century Cures Act, which contained a wealth of legislation.

With respect to home health, the Cures Act will require all home health agencies and personal care services that accept government reimbursement to have an EVV solution by the end of 2019 for personal care and 2023 for home health agencies.

State mandates on the way

Some states like Texas and South Carolina had mandated EVV long before this issue became part of federal home care legislation. Most states didn’t even have it on their radar. Now that a national mandate is in place in the near future, many states are in the process of creating EVV policies at this time.

We will discuss some of the caveats and successes of the different state EVV mandates.

Single Vendor System Warnings

1. In Louisiana, the state ordered a single system in 2013, then a different one in 2015. They ended up canceling both. Through that process, both the state and the providers wasted an enormous amount of money, time, and energy. However, they have another mandatory approach that is being implemented this year.
2. Connecticut is currently undergoing a class action lawsuit over its sole EVV implementation by a group of some of the largest providers in the state.
3. Texas experienced significant interruptions in care and reimbursement when their “preferred provider” was forced to withdraw from the state. Vendors using that vendor had to migrate all their data from one system to another and retrain their staff on a new system.
4. South Carolina and Tennessee have providers that operate across state lines and have to use more than one EVV provider. This causes an operational headache for those providers. Some of them have had to hire additional staff just to manage those different EVV systems.
5. YES. What happens if that one provider goes out of business? What if your systems fail for an extended period of time? What if you can’t trust the quality of your data without monitoring?

By contrast, other states, such as Missouri, allowed providers to choose an EVV provider that would work best for them, as long as the provider complied with Medicaid standards. More than 600 providers have implemented EVV in that state. We believe the litigation risks, reliability and uptime of a company, vendor business continuity, and stakeholder satisfaction outweigh any benefits gained from having a single vendor system that does not allow for competition in the marketplace. . A multi-vendor solution is simpler, easier, and more cost-effective for all parties involved.

Finally, there are three possible ways a state can implement a multi-vendor approach.

1. Choice of provider. Providers choose their EVV of choice and ensure that all standards are met. In addition, the state may require an export of data in a common format.
2. State Overseer. State EVV Supervisor in an open election model. An organization (state or private sector) with no conflicts of interest will verify and monitor the data and data quality coming from the various EVV providers in a single database or data warehouse, and provide information on the data to the state .
3. List of approved providers. The state creates a list of approved providers. The list should not be static, but instead allows different vendors to be rewarded or punished for good or poor performance and design.

Suppliers have a say! increase

In the Ley de Curas legislation, the electronic visit verification mandate requires states to consult providers we have a solution and that the the solution is “minimally onerous”. Let’s say you’ve already spent time, money, and energy building a software solution for your business, including EVV. It works for you, and now you don’t even have to think about it.

What if I suddenly had to change EVV providers? Now you need to get all the data from your current EVV system and migrate it to the new EVV! What if the new mandatory EVV is unreliable and frequently breaks (a common complaint from many providers in the one-provider mandatory state)? Not to mention, this will cause many wasted hours of training time for your staff to learn a new system.

You are called to have a voice on this issue in your state. Contact your associations and legislators to let them know that a choice-of-vendor solution is best for everyone involved.

Don’t fight EVV, embrace it

Some providers have balked at the idea of ​​EVV, and like it or not, it’s coming. However, it is not a bad thing and can actually make your business more profitable and efficient.

EVV allows you to automatically eliminate paper timesheets, record visits, and create billing/payroll data with the push of a button. Plus, if an audit comes your way, you won’t have to worry about digging up piles of paper, you can simply download your data in minutes.

Most providers that use EVV find ways to save hours of administrative time, reduce overpayments, and find ways to increase revenue. So embrace technology, it’s good for you.

What types of EVV technologies are there?

Originally, EVV started as a landline technology that recorded the time of entry and exit of the customer’s home. That method is still widely used today. However, with the advent of smartphones, more and more visits are verified through smartphones using GPS location. This is by far the fastest growing method. Also, computers and tablets can be used for verified visits.

Additional technologies include triangulation of non-smartphone cellular services, fixed device registrations, and now voice bot registrations. The no-smartphone method occurs when a caregiver calls on a non-smartphone phone and then cell phone carriers use the towers to locate where the caregiver is. With a fixed device, some areas don’t have cell service or landlines, so caregivers will scan a barcode, record a number, or scan an RFID card to clock in and out.

• Telephony
• GPS-smartphone
• mobile phone triangulation
• Computer or tablet
• fixed base
• voice bot

While you may not need all of these technologies, some states require multiple technologies in an EVV solution. Make sure there is, at a minimum, phone and mobile visit verification in your EVV solution.