Richter ShareSource Blog

For owners of home health and hospice organizations of all sizes and scopes, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused financial and operational disruptions that to this day leave many operators facing dire prospects.

The services your home health or hospice organization provides are vital to the health and well-being of patients. Yet, to continue delivering services, you must remain financially and operationally viable, today and tomorrow. COVID-19 has made that unusually difficult, particularly for home health agencies, since many skilled staff aren’t able to conduct site visits, for a number of reasons. The primary consequences of this are:

• Home health agencies are now struggling to meet their low utilization payment adjustment (LUPA) thresholds as per physician orders;
• Revenues are down and could continue to be so long as site visits aren’t being conducted; and
• Agencies could be risking the loss of recertifications or new admissions they otherwise could receive under “normal” (i.e., non-COVID-19) circumstances.

If you own or operate a home health or hospice agency, you know just how vital the services you provide are to the health and well-being of your patient. Likewise, you no doubt understand that maintaining the sound financial health of your organization helps ensure that this care can continue to be delivered into the future.

For home health and hospice agencies, optimizing revenue cycle management is key to achieving this. And while agencies come in all different shapes and sizes, most personnel handling financial duties – including registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), office staff and more – are hard-pressed to find even a minute of free time, day in and day out. It’s all they can do to simply perform the basic requirements of their jobs, let alone devise and deploy industry best practices to optimize revenue cycle billing and other financial processes.