Why Do Agencies Need to Abide to EVV?

We already talked about the story behind EVV’s evolution and the need of enforcing it in the health care industry. Here, we will see why health care agencies need EVV and how they can become EVV compliant. At the end, we will share the overall benefits of this mandate to payers, agencies and customers.

Why Do Agencies Need EVV?
There are care providers who feel reluctant to the idea of implementing EVV. However, no matter what they feel, it is already in and can make a health care service business more efficient and profitable. Once the EVV is in place, it will automatically eliminate paper time sheets, record visits, and create billing/payroll data in just few clicks and scroll. Importantly, when there is an audit, you will not have to worry about diffing out piles and stacks of paper records; everything is digitally available and can be downloaded as needed. Those who already got EVV aligned in their business said that it saved hours of admin time, helped in avoiding over payments, and made operations efficient to increase revenue. The bottom line is, embrace the move and it is going to benefit your agency in many ways. The key benefits are -

• Compliance to 21st Century Cures Act
  The Act has a provision to impose penalty on states and agencies if they do not implement EVV within the allocated period. If the agencies that requires in-home visits and use Medicaid funds to deliver personal care or home health services will be subject to reduced federal match funds.
  
  
• Preventing Errors, Fraud and Abuse
  The major concern of people in the industry is how to avoid Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse that causes billions of dollars every year to the taxpayers as well as affect quality of care drastically. To prevent the susceptibility of service delivery, EVV mitigates this risk by capturing the date, time, and physical location of each service and flagging questionable ones for review.
  
  
• Monitoring Service Delivery
  When EVV is in place, real-time tracking of service delivery, care schedule and caregiver availability can be monitored from anywhere at any time. Which means, everything is captured and recorded to diminish any possibilities of mishandling.
  

EVV Methods to Ensure Compliance
Health care agencies can ensure compliance to the new Federal EVV mandate by following three industry acceptable ways -

• Visit Verification on Telephone
• Mobile Application to Punch-in Arrival and Departure Time
• Fixed Visit Verification Procedure
  
  

Adapting these three technological solutions will help care providers to increase care quality, automate billing and payroll, strengthen compliance, and improve efficiency by allowing them to verify visits at the point of care with flexible options.

How EVV Benefits to Payers, Agencies and Customers?

• Payers – EVV prevents waste, fraud, and abuse, helps in providing quality care consistently and ultimately brings peace of mind to the payers.
• Agencies – No more administrative hassles, fully automated workflows, maximizes revenue by reducing rejected claims, and ensures continued funding source compliance.
• Customers - Expects quality care by verifying that he is receiving the right services, at the right location, at the right time, and by the right provider.
  

When it comes to list out benefits of EVV, they are numerous. Moreover, the benefits of EVV go well beyond just avoidance of fraud and abuse once it is adopted all across the healthcare industry. People who think they can eliminate all of their fraud and abuse problems simply by implementing EVV are mistaken. While it is a significant tool, it is not a magic wand. CareSmartz offers home care software that allows your agency follow all the compliance and industry regulations while doing business. 

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