HHAeXchange had the opportunity to talk with two homecare providers on the top metrics and reports they use to streamline operations, prevent errors, and ultimately grow their agencies. Polina Savich, Director of Patient Services at Jzanus Home Care, Inc., and Kateryna Kovalenko, General Manager at Countrywide Home Care, joined us for a recent webinar and shared how they use reports to save them hours every week.
Kovalenko: Even when we first started using HHAeXchange, I was still using a lot of Excel spreadsheets because each department had their own spreadsheets. There were even spreadsheets within spreadsheets! It was hard to keep everything in one place because we had things everywhere. There were libraries of binders, folders, reports, and sticky notes all over the place. It was a mess. And we only had 60 clients back then, but it was enough for me to understand the benefits of HHAeXchange.
Savich:I can relate to every word Kate is saying. I had to stay in the office every night until 9 or 10 o’clock because they needed me to do clinical and HR compliance, nursing visits, and MD orders. And everything was on Excel spreadsheets. Every day I had to update the spreadsheets, for every visit. It was a nightmare. I was also helping with the statistical reports. Which again, meant me staying until 10 o’clock or 12:00 o’clock at night, and I was doing everything myself because everything was manual. It was a total disaster.
Kovalenko: The first report that we started using was the billing report. Before HHAeXchange, we had to manually bill each client separately. The whole billing department stayed until midnight. So, the first benefit of HHAeXchange was, of course, billing. We were able to gather the data all together and bill in one click to the MCO. That was it. And at first, I was a little bit surprised and shocked because I couldn’t believe this could be that easy. So, I was a little scared, but of course, when everything went through and it actually became reality, I was super happy about it. Billing, payroll, and EVV were the main reports that we started using at the beginning.
Savich: My first experience was that I was able to gather all the data for statistical reporting because HHAeXchange has a Department of Health (DOH) report. So, all the manual calculations went in the garbage, and I literally shortened my day by three or four hours doing these statistical reports.
My quality assurance is also a piece of cake right now. Everything is at the tip of your fingers, it’s very easy. All the QA reports, admissions, discharges, hospitalization, complaints, incidents, HR complaints, conflict reports. Everything is much, much easier compared to what we had before.
Kovalenko: I remember the first report that I ran where I was thinking HHAeXchange was the authorization report. Once I realized how to use it, I was able to show it to my team and they were like, “Is this real? Is it really possible we don’t have to work overnight? That we don’t have to burn ourselves out? That we can just run the report and see what we need to do?” While it sounds like Polina was concentrating on the HR QA’s, in my role I was more responsible for the billing process and making sure that everything was correct there. So, when I found out that authorization reports were actually showing whose authorization was about to expire, and who we needed to contact to request any authorizations (instead of going to each patient at the end of the month to check) I was thrilled. And by that time, we already had like 250 clients, so every month we had to go through each of them and see what was going on. So, when we finally got that report, that was a life saver. Now it’s much easier, we don’t have to go and run each eligibility every time. We just wait for the report to pop up and we’re able to fix all our problems and not lose any money.
Kovalenko: When I was trying to get my bosses to buy in on more features, I told them, we either hire a new person to do this manually, or we have one system that runs everything for us. Yes, you’re paying a little extra money, but ultimately it was a win/win because why should you hire another person when everything is automated. Plus, another person could result in more human error. That was my selling point to my boss— have everything be automatic, have everything in HHAeXchange, and then whatever report you want, any time, any date, boom, you have it.
Savich: When we were doing demos in the inception, I learned that exception exclusion verification is going to be done automatically by HHAeXchange. That was my selling point. I didn’t hear anything else because at the time I had to pay two people overtime to complete this. We had over 600 caregivers, and we had all these exclusion lists we needed to compare because you can’t bill Medicaid if you’re not doing that. So that was my biggest selling point.
I also want to mention the accuracy in HHAeXchange for compliance and HR. I’m telling you, we for the last six years have had 100% compliance in HR and that’s a big thing because when OMIG (Office of the Medicaid Inspector General) is coming to check up on you like we have had happen, if one single piece of paper is missing, you can lose thousands and thousands of dollars. So, knock on wood, we’ve been very, very successful.
Kovalenko: I also wanted to mention the missed visit report. We check that on a weekly basis and that helped our agency to get the 2% rate from one of the MCOs because of our lower ratio of missed visits. This was great because we were able to get some bonuses for the employees which helped us retain more employees. And of course, the agency benefited from that as well.
Savich: The attendance report is a big thing for us, too. It takes time to find out where all the caregivers are. Now we run a report, and we can see who missed clock-in at 9:00 o’clock. The beauty of it is now we find out before the patient calls and asks where their caregiver is.
Savich: During the pandemic we were all sitting at home, and obviously there were a lot of cancellations. The board members were asking us how much money we were losing, and what percentage of business we were losing. With HHAeXchange, I was able to provide them with the amount of money we lost, the budget, and through attendance and billing, I could track how much we were increasing every month. Then we could make modifications to our practice based on those losses. And there are other questions that the MLTCs usually ask, such as what the average hours per patient per contract are. This is a simple report that we’re running, and based on that, they are adjusting the rates. So, we are able to take that data on a daily basis and say, “Well, this patient probably needs to be referred to another program because of their high utilization rate.” So, it’s very helpful.
Kovalenko: The owners of our company are concerned with how to acquire clients and bill correctly. And of course, profit is an important question. But as the general manager who is responsible for ensuring compliance, my question is how to automate the workflow to make it easier. At one point, I was going crazy because it was too much for one person to handle.
What I learned is that HHAeXchange is covering many of these workflows with reports. For marketing we have reports showing how much money each marketer brings in. We have the HR compliance report which saves a ton of time and provides updates on each document and evaluation progress. The case coordination department runs reports such as missed visits and keeps track of open cases to ensure nothing is overlooked. For EVV, you have the call dashboards, missed-in, missed-out reports, and prevailing reports. They also run overlapping reports to ensure that two caregivers are not working at the same time. Payroll looks at financial questions such as profit and loss, how much we bill, and how much we pay to see if we’re making any progress. We can also analyze each patient’s data individually to determine if we’re making a profit or if it’s better to refer them to another agency. All these reports are like running an MRI scan on your company. You’re able to see everything as long as you know where to click and how to read the reports.
Kovalenko: I believe the best advice is to enter all the data you have for everyone, including patients and caregivers. Even if you don’t know why you need certain information or what it means right now, enter it in all the fields provided. Secondly, invest your time in learning how HHAeXchange works. It might be confusing at first, but it’s a great tool that can be highly beneficial if you invest time in joining webinars, reading information, and understanding why each report is in the system. You might discover something new when you try to run a report. So, my advice is to invest time and learn more about how it all works. Keep the data accurate at all times, and you will benefit from it 100%.
Savich: I completely agree. I would just add that every report you run is based on the data that is entered. So, the people entering the data need to be trained. Don’t skimp on training to save time. That’s number one. Secondly, you need to invest time in the initial setup of your agency. Set your requirements, including EVV and everything else, based on what your company is going to pay for. It’s important to talk to support and get everything set up. Also, review the list of reports available in HHAeXchange that are valuable. You’ll see how beneficial the system can be. Lastly, look at the companies and other services that are affiliated with HHAeXchange. It’s a multi-agency platform, so if you have a certain contract, you’ll be communicating with them through HHAeXchange.
Watch the full webinar here and jump to 37:30 to get a look at our new and improved Business Intelligence dashboards. To learn how these reports can help your agency streamline operations and grow, contact us today for a personalized demo of our latest reporting technology.
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