The electronic visit verification (EVV) implementation process has been ongoing for a few years now. While some providers have been compliant with EVV for some time, others are just beginning to become so as their states have made “good faith” efforts to roll it out.
Like any regulations that home-based care agencies have been subjected to of late, it’s been hard for some providers to adjust and easier for others.
Broadly, EVV applies to Medicaid-reimbursed home care providers. It requires them to electronically verify the services they deliver. The caregivers are responsible for recording data points, such as date, time, location, type of service and other information.
Not many states met the original deadline for the EVV mandate, which was in 2020. Most received exemptions, giving them extra implementation time.
That has led to a drawn-out process of providers being introduced to the new requirement.
“Some states are moving more quickly than others, but the good-faith effort for most states is well underway,” HHAeXchange CEO Greg Strobel told Home Health Care News. “It’s been a steady trajectory of more and more states engaging towards EVV compliance. … But we believe 2022 is going to be a very active year for additional procurement, selection and implementation.”
New York City-based HHAeXchange is a home care technology platform and an aggregator of EVV data for payers and providers. The company most recently announced that it had received Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) certification to be New Jersey’s state aggregator of EVV services.
States can choose one of the following paths for EVV:
– Either a state-sponsored vendor or a provider’s own choice
– A state-mandated vendor
– A state-operated system
– Full provider choice
– Managed care organization (MCO) choice, where MCOs select the vendor and cover most costs
“We had a lot of integration work to do and a lot of testing work to do, so we’re thrilled that [New Jersey] got CMS certification all the way back to the implementation date,” Strobel said. “So they’ll receive federal matching funds, no penalties and all the other stuff that you hope to achieve for a state.”
Overall, the company’s goal is to help aid providers, states and the federal government in their effort to streamline verification of home care services.
For providers, the implementation process likely looks different based on the size and resources of an organization, plus what state they operate in.
“I think this industry, like many others, is maturing rapidly. And whenever there’s industries that are maturing rapidly and onboarding technology requirements, there’s always going to be some segment of that industry that’s going to consolidate,” Strobel said. “Certainly, at the very small end, there’s providers that just opt to become part of larger organizations rather than onboard.”
Addus HomeCare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS), a large provider of Medicaid-based home care services, substantiated that notion last February on an earnings call.
“We are also seeing more states moving into EVV,” Addus CFO and Executive VP Brian Poff said. “A lot of the states are starting that transition process, which I think is making business for some of those smaller providers a little more difficult — and a little more likely to be attractive for us.”
EVV implementation, though, is a necessary step in the right direction, Strobel said. The home-based care industry is becoming more technologically savvy and getting more attention on the national scale, moving it forward overall.
“There’s a lot of disruption in this industry right now,” Strobel said. “But it’s more of a function of just evolving technology and compliance more than it is anyone trying to weed anybody out.”
The process should also theoretically make the jobs of caregivers easier, giving them simple technology to utilize to log data and meet compliance.
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