Point of Care Picks

 Hospice referrals can move quickly. A hospital discharge planner may call with a patient expected to leave that afternoon. A physician's office may send records for someone whose condition has changed significantly. A family may be trying to understand whether hospice is appropriate while also managing an increasingly difficult situation at home. Behind each referral is an operational process involving records, eligibility review, insurance information, physician communication, family conversations, scheduling, equipment, medications, and staffing. When those pieces are tracked through separate emails, spreadsheets, fax folders, and individual notes, it becomes harder for the intake team to see what is actually happening. A clearer referral pipeline gives hospice teams one place to understand what has been received, what is still needed, who is responsible for the next step, and which referrals require immediate attention. 📥 Bring Every Referral Into One Workflow Hospice referral...

The first home health visit may happen in the patient's home, but much of the information needed to make that visit successful enters the agency earlier. Referral documents arrive, insurance information is collected, physicians are identified, diagnoses are entered, services are requested, and staff begin determining whether the agency can accept the patient. The challenge is making sure the information gathered during intake does not remain trapped in the intake process. Once the patient is accepted and the first visit is scheduled, clinicians need an accurate picture of why the patient was referred, what services are expected, and what information still needs to be confirmed. A connected intake workflow can reduce duplicate work while helping the first clinician arrive with more context and fewer unanswered questions. 📥 Start With a Complete Referral Record Referrals can arrive through several channels. Agencies may receive information electronically, by fax, through a referral ...

A home care agency may have schedulers, caregivers, nurses, billing specialists, intake coordinators, supervisors, administrators, and other employees working inside the same software platform. They all need information to do their jobs, but they do not necessarily need access to the same information. That is where role-based access becomes important. Instead of giving every employee identical access to the system, agencies can structure permissions around job responsibilities. A caregiver may need patient care information and assigned schedules, while a billing employee may need financial and payer details. Administrators may require broader access to reporting and system configuration. Thoughtful permission settings can make software easier to navigate while supporting privacy, security, and more controlled workflows across the agency. 👥 Different Roles Need Different Views The information a scheduler uses throughout the day is very different from what a caregiver needs during a pat...

 An accounts receivable aging report can tell a home health agency how much money is outstanding and how long balances have remained unpaid. What it does not automatically tell the billing team is what to work first. When A/R grows, billing staff can end up staring at hundreds of outstanding claims spread across different payers, aging buckets, denial reasons, and dollar amounts. Working straight down a report may keep everyone busy, but it does not necessarily direct attention toward the claims with the greatest financial impact or the clearest path toward resolution. Technology can help agencies turn aging data into a working strategy. Instead of treating A/R as a static report reviewed at the end of the month, teams can organize outstanding balances into meaningful worklists, assign responsibility, track follow-up, and identify the reasons claims are remaining unpaid. 💵 Aging Buckets Are Only the Starting Point Traditional A/R reports often divide balances into categories such ...

 Getting a claim submitted should be the final step in a process that has already been checked along the way. In reality, billing teams often become the place where problems from several other departments finally surface. A missing signature, incomplete visit note, authorization mismatch, incorrect payer information, or unfinished order can stop a claim even though the patient received care days or weeks earlier. For home health agencies, improving billing efficiency does not necessarily mean asking the billing department to work faster. A better approach is creating a workflow where information is checked as it moves from intake to scheduling, clinical documentation, quality review, and finally billing. When each stage contributes clean information to the next, claims have a much better chance of leaving the agency without another round of research and corrections. 📋 Claim Readiness Starts Before the First Visit Many of the details that determine whether a claim can move forward ...

The worst time to discover an EVV problem is after billing has already started. Missing clock-outs, unmatched visits, incorrect service information, and unresolved exceptions are easier to correct while the visit is still recent. When agencies wait until billing staff encounter the problem, they turn a visit-level issue into a billing-level issue. A useful EVV dashboard should tell staff where those problems are before claims enter the picture. 🚨 Unverified Visits Should Be Impossible to Miss Completed schedules and verified visits aren't necessarily the same thing. Agencies need a clear way to identify visits that were expected to occur but don't yet have the required verification information. A strong EVV software dashboard should separate completed, pending, rejected, and exception visits so employees don't have to open records individually just to determine status. EVV advantage: Status visibility helps teams focus on visits that still require action. ⏱️ Missing Cloc...