CellTrak Blog

The reports following recent hurricanes in the United States were heartbreaking. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, residents of a Texas nursing home that had never flooded before were trapped by rising waters. Meanwhile, eight residents perished in a Florida nursing home that lost air conditioning after Hurricane Irma, despite the home’s prior preparations for power outages.

For Medicare-certified home health agencies seeking to differentiate themselves, the Home Health Compare website managed by CMS can be a powerful tool. Potential clients, private payers, and government funders use the website to identify, compare, and partner with outstanding agencies.

However, to get the most from this tool, agencies need to understand how the website works and how they can maximize their quality ratings to achieve the coveted five stars across the board.

Let’s explore this further.

The home health care industry is white-hot these days, and smart agency owners are looking for creative ways to capitalize on this growth market. With annual growth rates expected to hit 7.5 percent this year, the industry is anticipated to be worth a cumulative – and astonishing – $130 billion by the end of 2017.

So how can agencies save a piece of this pie for themselves?

As one of the most documented and regulated industries, home care routinely produces vast amounts of paperwork, costing agencies precious time and resources to generate and maintain. As technology has evolved, today’s digital solutions provide advantages that paper just can’t match, from enhanced productivity to better compliance, communication, cost, and care.

HIPAA regulations are the cornerstone of patient privacy, and it’s a home care agency’s obligation to follow them precisely. But the rules are intricate, and it’s easy for employees to inadvertently commit a seemingly minor violation that could result in significant penalties.

As the demand for home health care has skyrocketed, the need for home health aides is projected to grow more than 48% between 2012 and 2022. Agencies are struggling to keep up, and increasingly, they’re turning to immigrant workers. In fact, of the approximately 1.4 million home care workers today, nearly 550,000 are immigrants.

While this workforce segment is filling critical vacancies in the industry, it also presents a unique challenge to agency owners: How can agencies successfully manage a workforce of non-native English speakers? How can agencies integrate these diverse backgrounds into a cohesive agency culture?

As an agency owner, growing your business is always top of mind. And yet, making sure your agency stands out and gets noticed by clients and referrers is hard, even for seasoned marketing professionals.

With more seniors wanting to remain in their homes as they age — even during health challenges — emerging mobile health (mHealth) technology is making it happen. Home health agencies can leverage these new tools to improve the services they provide and help clients and their families take a proactive role in seniors’ health and safety.

The 21^st Century Cures Act has established January 1, 2019, as the deadline for states to establish Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) standards for Medicaid-funded personal care services. As this date draws closer, state Medicaid directors must soon decide on the type of EVV system they’ll require.

Specifically, states will need to decide whether to mandate an open or closed EVV system. These two options are very different from each other, with different implications for home care agencies.

Before states enact these sweeping changes for their constituent agencies, states must understand these differences, so they can endorse the best solution for their agencies’ — and their own — needs.

Effective communication is always important in the home care industry. But when it comes to remote workers, who likely spend a lot of time in the homes of clients but very little time in the office, a solid communication plan becomes essential.

This requires some thought. Not only do you need to keep your home care workers up to speed on agency-related information, you also need to keep them informed on care plans, schedules, and other client-specific details. And yet, when communicating any sensitive personal health information, agencies must be mindful of HIPAA compliance, data ownership, and security.

In the face of these logistical challenges when trying to connect remote workers, it’s easy to let communication suffer. But it doesn’t have to. Let’s look at eight ways you can improve communication with the remote home care workers in your agency.