What is It?
The 21st Century Cures Act was signed into law on December 13, 2016. It requires that states implement Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) for all Medicaid-funded personal care services and home health care services. EVV is clocking-in and clocking-out for shifts. States were originally required to implement EVV use for personal care services by January 1, 2019 and home health care services by January 1, 2023. Congress passed a bill to delay the implementation requirement for one year (i.e., January 1, 2020) and then New York applied for, and was granted, a one-time, 1-year good faith extension that delayed the implementation date for EVV use for personal care services to January 1, 2021.
Why is EVV Required?
The goals of EVV are to:
What Does This Mean for You?
THIS IS IMPORTANT! All shifts must be supported by EVV. Said another way, your compliance rate for clocking-in and clocking-out must be 100% unless there is a valid exception. This applies to waiver cases (i.e., NHTD and TBI), non-waiver cases, as well as CDPAP.
The 21st Century Cures Act was signed into law on December 13, 2016. It requires that states implement Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) for all Medicaid-funded personal care services and home health care services. EVV is clocking-in and clocking-out for shifts. States were originally required to implement EVV use for personal care services by January 1, 2019 and home health care services by January 1, 2023. Congress passed a bill to delay the implementation requirement for one year (i.e., January 1, 2020) and then New York applied for, and was granted, a one-time, 1-year good faith extension that delayed the implementation date for EVV use for personal care services to January 1, 2021.
Why is EVV Required?
The goals of EVV are to:
- Ensure timely service delivery for clients, including real-time service gap reporting and monitoring;
- Reduce the administrative burden associated with paper timesheet processing; and
- Generate cost savings from the prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse.
What Does This Mean for You?
THIS IS IMPORTANT! All shifts must be supported by EVV. Said another way, your compliance rate for clocking-in and clocking-out must be 100% unless there is a valid exception. This applies to waiver cases (i.e., NHTD and TBI), non-waiver cases, as well as CDPAP.
You have always been required by agency policy to clock-in and clock-out for shifts under agency policy, regardless of whether or not you submitted a timesheet, but we have not enforced this policy too severely. Now that EVV has been required by law, and not just agency policy, we are enforcing the requirement in full. To help ensure that all caregivers clock-in and clock-out for each and every shift:
- The availability of paper timesheets will be phased out and no longer considered acceptable for payroll/billing; and
- Caregivers who fail to consistently use EVV will be subject to progressive discipline action up to and including termination. As a starting point, caregivers will likely be automatically inactivated for failing to clock-in/clock-out for three shifts.
What Should You Do Right Now?
If you have not consistently been clocking-in/clocking out for all shifts, start getting into the habit during these few remaining weeks of 2020. As mentioned above, unless an exception applies, beginning January 1, 2021 caregivers are required by the Cures Act to clock-in/clock-out for every shift. EVV can be accomplished using either the client's home phone, the mobile app (preferred option), or the fob.
If you don't already have the HHA eXchange app, download it to your phone right now:
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