by: Sarah Schock
Decision Health
Creative outsourcing could help both home health and private duty agencies reduce burden on key staff while continuing to navigate the staffing shortage.
By outsourcing administrative tasks, you’re freeing up office staff or other employees to spend more time supporting caregivers in the field. That, in turn, could lead to happier caregivers who want to stay with your agency longer. It could also lead to faster payments.
Sometimes it can actually cost an agency more money to insource instead of outsource these tasks, because of a tight labor market or stiff competition, says Beau Sorensen, director of finance and operations at First Choice Home Health and Hospice in Orem, Utah.
“Often you don’t have the qualified people in your geographic area who can handle everything that needs to be done,” he explains.
Outsourcing tasks to qualified professionals takes issues off of your plate and opens your bandwidth to deal with core competencies at your company, Sorensen says.
Instead of worrying about a critical staff member quitting, agencies can continue forward with lower overhead and less stress when another organization is responsible for staffing those roles, he says.
“With office tasks, the sky is really the limit,” Sorensen says. “You do have to have an administrator on hand, but beyond the administrator, you can outsource everything else.”
The Conditions of Participation do not prohibit outsourcing, but keep in mind that you should have some sort of in-office presence should any surveyors walk in the door, he says.
Decide which tasks are worth paying for
When it comes to outsourcing, each task is going to cost something different, so agencies need to decide which tasks are worth paying for.
Outsourcing is usually handled on a piece-work basis, Sorensen explains. This means that an agency pays a certain cost per-hour, per-chart or per-bill sent.
While the exact amount will vary depending on how the outsourced entity charges, agencies can expect to pay around the following, Sorensen says:
- Billing. An agency can expect to pay between 2% to 4% of collections when outsourcing billing.
- Chart reviews. Agencies can expect to pay around $100 an hour for chart reviews.
- Accounting. Accounting fees vary, but costs average about $125 an hour for typical work, or up to $400 an hour for specialized services.
- Are you able to do more work with less headache and better results?
- Are you getting money collected quicker?
- Are you freeing up your internal staff to be able to do more important things?
- Are you spending your time on what matters instead of tasks that are better suited to someone else?
Outsource administrative tasks
There are many tasks that agencies can outsource that will save time for both office staff and caregivers, says Lisa Newell, chief clinical officer at Corridor in Overland Park, Kan.:
- ICD-10 Coding
- Multiple levels of OASIS Reviews
- Plan of Care Reviews
- QAPI audits
- Root Cause Analyses
- ADR audits
- Compliance Audits
- Due Diligence
- RCD Submissions
- Revenue cycle workflows for billing from intake/authorization through revenue recovery
- Staff training curriculums and tracking of training for compliance
Additionally, Newell says routine workflow tasks that require a person to move files or click a button are ripe for process automation. Companies that offer outsourcing can offer help with everything from organizing your documentation to coding and reviewing plans of care.
When working with outsource companies, determine acceptable operational and quality service levels together and monitor and report to those metrics, Newell says.
“We still have humans performing the tasks, so no matter which entity supplies the worker, errors will occur because of the human factor,” she says.
Outsourcing can reduce burden for many
Outsourcing administrative tasks can reduce burdens throughout an agency, Newell says. Specifically, outsourcing can do the following:
- Reduce paperwork burden. Agencies can reduce the burden felt by clinical staff related to completion of business and administrative tasks.
- Save money. Lower your labor costs when working with larger outsourcing agency that has economy of scale.
- Maintain compliance. You may achieve more compliance with rules and regulations when outsourcing.
- Improve timeliness. Outsourced tasks can have improved timeliness in process completion due to assessments being completed overnight. This can also help with staffing challenges because it can clear backed-up workflows that tend to slow down important processes.
- Manage multiple EMRs. Outsourcing gives agencies the ability to manage multiple EMRs while maintaining consistency of workflow processes. Most outsource vendors have teams that are able to work efficiently in any EMR, Newell says. This is especially helpful during care transitions from other entities/agencies that use a different EMR than your agency.
“This article was first published in Home Health Line, one of the industry’s oldest and most trusted sources for information and guidance around regulatory issues (OASIS-E/HHVBP), marketing, recruitment, compliance and more. For more industry news and cost-cutting tips for managing these difficult market conditions, visit homehealthline.com.”
About Corridor
For over 30 years, Corridor has partnered with home health and hospice providers, delivering powerful solutions to support the unique challenges of caring for patients in the home. Our team of operations executives, clinicians, and nationally renowned industry experts have run provider organizations and resolved the same challenges you face.
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