Hancock County Health Department Home Health Agency Uses Mobile to Capture Visits and Savings
Schaumburg, IL (July 30, 2013) - Illinois based Hancock County Health Department Home Health Agency, is the longest standing home health agency in their area. They started in 1978 with only two employees; at present day they have grown dramatically to serve more patients. The majority of their home health staff were raised in the community, assuring familiarity with the area as well as giving patients a feeling of being cared for by relate-able staff. Hancock is fully Medicare certified and has contractual therapists in the areas of physical, occupational and speech. They provide private pay services, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, and Dept. of Rehabilitation.
Hancock County Health Department Home Health Agency has been using an electronic health record (EHR) for many years. When Hancock needed to gain better insight on staff safety and a real-time pulse of their organization, they chose to implement the CellTrak VisitManager™ solution. This included an easily flowing two-way information interface to Allscripts.
Recently the state of Illinois has enforced new regulatory provisions requiring agencies to demonstrate the use of electronic visit verification (EVV). This provision requires agencies use an electronic means to verify the delivery of services paid for by the state that can be audited to assure compliance. CellTrak was a simple and affordable form of complying with this provision, which includes the implementation of a global positioning system (GPS) application that runs on a mobile device enabling a full suite of healthcare worker tools. For their mobile documentation staff, Hancock selected to use the latest Blackberry devices running on the US Cellular network.
Becky Roskamp, Administrative Coordinator of Home Health commented, “The convenience of the flow between Allscripts and CellTrak is great because it saves time and costs as Staff no longer have to bring paper notes into the agency, everything is electronic. It also cuts down on filing time and the cost of paying office staff to file. Our mileage costs have been cut significantly as staff no longer has to report to the office daily to get schedules and care plans. All the information they need is in the palm of their hand in real-time.”
Today easy to use and readily available mobile technologies from CellTrak are changing how healthcare staff delivers care. Personal care staff can now provide care to more patients and consumers in a secured fashion that empowers the workers to have anytime, anywhere and any device tools at their fingertips.
Roskamp also added, “The time it takes to verify the mileage and travel time has been reduce as CellTrak does all the work for us. Clerical work has been improved due to the ability of charting the patient visit as well as the visit times electronically and seamlessly on a mobile device. This allows us to provide more time on care delivery and less on paperwork.”
Michael K. Wons, President and CEO of CellTrak Technologies added, “It has been pure enjoyment working with the Home Health Agency team at Hancock Country Health Department and we are incredibly pleased to assist in making sure they were prepared for the newly enforced mandate. The VisitManager™ solution partnered with their EHR system will continue to bring positive results to the entire Hancock team and keep them compliant.”
All In-Home Service providers are required to comply with the certification process of their EVV system for EACH INH agreement no later than July 31, 2013. If an EVV system is NOT in place for their entire INH agreement coverage area by the verification deadline, the INH provider will be required to provide a second and final verification document by September 30, 2013. If this system is not in place services will be revoked. Learn more here: http://www.state.il.us/aging/
CellTrak, an Illinois based company is an approved form to meet Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) Standards. GPS monitoring/verification, included in all of the CellTrak mobile solutions, provide accurate tracking of the exact location of homecare staff and recording the actual mileage and visit time for each visit on a mobile device.
About Illinois Department on Aging:
The MISSION of the Illinois Department on Aging is to serve and advocate for older Illinoisans and their caregivers by administering quality and culturally appropriate programs that promote partnerships and encourage independence, dignity, and quality of life. For more information please visit:http://www.state.il.us/
About Hancock County Health Department:
The Hancock County Health Department is committed to providing top quality health care to Hancock County residents. The below website is designed to provide information regarding the many services we offer. For more information please visit: www.hancockhealth.info