Choosing the best home health EMR for success with the Medicare Survey

 
Passing a Medicare survey is a pivotal milestone for home health agencies, ensuring compliance with CMS regulations and maintaining eligibility for reimbursement. Accreditation organizations such as the Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP), Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC), and The Joint Commission (JCAHO) play a significant role in this process by conducting rigorous evaluations.

To navigate these surveys successfully, agencies require robust home health software that streamlines operations and ensures compliance. Alora Home Health Software stands out as a comprehensive solution designed to meet these needs.

Understanding the Medicare Survey Landscape

 
Medicare surveys assess an agency’s adherence to the Conditions of Participation (CoPs), focusing on areas like patient care, documentation, and administrative processes. Common deficiencies identified during these surveys include:

• Incomplete or Non-Personalized Plans of Care: Care plans that are generic and fail to reflect the patient’s unique needs, goals, and conditions.
• Delayed or Insufficient Clinical Documentation: Missing, incomplete, or late entries that compromise continuity of care and regulatory compliance.
• Medication Management Deficiencies: Gaps in medication reconciliation, incomplete drug profiles, or failure to document changes accurately.
• Noncompliance with Physician Orders: Delivering care without proper physician authorization or failing to follow prescribed instructions.
• Insufficient Supervision of Home Health Aides: Missing or undocumented supervisory visits required to ensure quality and compliance.
• Failure to Communicate Changes in Patient Condition: Failure or delays in notifying physicians about critical updates in a patient’s health status.

Accrediting bodies like CHAP, ACHC, and JCAHO evaluate these aspects to ensure quality and compliance.

Alora Home Health Software: Facilitating Compliance and Survey Success

Alora Home Health Software is engineered to address the critical areas scrutinized during Medicare surveys, offering features that promote compliance and operational efficiency.

1. Comprehensive and Individualized Care Planning

Alora enables clinicians to create detailed, patient-specific plans of care, incorporating SMART goals and ensuring alignment with comprehensive assessments. This level of detail helps prevent deficiencies related to generic or incomplete care plans.

2. Timely and Accurate Documentation

With Alora’s intuitive interface and alerts, clinicians can document visits promptly, whether online or offline. The software’s offline capability ensures that documentation is not delayed due to connectivity issues, maintaining compliance with timely record-keeping requirements.

3. Robust Medication Management

The medication management features in Alora Home Health EHR facilitate thorough medication reconciliation, including over-the-counter drugs and supplements. Alerts for discrepancies and the ability to document PRN indicators help maintain accurate medication profiles.

4. Compliance with Physician Orders

The software tracks physician orders and visit frequencies, ensuring that services are provided as authorized. It also prompts for necessary updates when changes in patient condition occur, supporting compliance with care directives.

5. Effective Supervision of Home Health Aides

Alora helps monitor, schedule, and document supervisory visits.  Alora’s Plan of Care-based visit notes help ensure that home health aide documentation reflects what was required in the care plan.

6. Real-Time Communication and Alerts

The system’s communication tools facilitate immediate reporting of patient status changes to physicians, reducing delays in care adjustments and maintaining compliance with notification requirements.

Accreditation and Industry Recognition

Alora’s commitment to excellence is recognized through its CHAP Verification across home health, hospice, and home care services. This endorsement reflects the software’s alignment with industry standards and its effectiveness in supporting agencies through the accreditation process.

Alora is the Optimal Choice for Medicare Survey Preparedness

Alora Home Health Software offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored to address the specific requirements of Medicare surveys conducted by CHAP, ACHC, and JCAHO. Its focus on individualized care planning, timely documentation, medication management, compliance with physician orders, and effective compliance validations positions agencies for success.

By choosing Alora, home health agencies equip themselves with a powerful tool to navigate the complexities of Medicare compliance confidently.

Schedule a no-obligation demo to discover how Alora can help your agency confidently navigate and succeed in your next Medicare survey.

Additional Reading:

1. Optimizing home health agency workflow with technology
2. Caregiver training – six key practices to get nurses off to a good start
3. Winning at Caregiver Recruitment for Home Health Care Agencies
4. Home Health Marketing Strategies
5. Chap Verified Home Health Software
6. Financial Management in home health agencies