Billing Best Practices For Your Home Care Agency

One of the most important—and controversial—tasks in home care: billing. Let’s talk about how billing can be less scary and more productive. 

As an agency owner, you are dedicated to ensuring that your clients receive the best care that your caregivers can provide. That image guides your vision, but the thought of billing, though important, can cause headaches. 

Let’s talk about the art of billing. It’s not just about figures and Excel spreadsheets, it’s also about making your life easier. (Yes, it’s possible—stick with us here.)

In this blog, we’ll be talking about a few best practices to make billing work better for your agency: 

• Sending invoices on time 
• Automating as many tasks as possible
• Conducting billing audits 

Sending invoices on time

It sounds silly, but sending invoices on time can be a huge time saver on the back end. If your invoices are sent late, you will likely get paid late. This makes a mess for all parties, especially your caregivers. 

Raise your hand if it’s hard for you to count the times where you thought an invoice had been sent and it was still hanging out in your drafts? Invoices can take 5-15 minutes each, but that can add up week over week, when you have a looming call-out or client concern to manage. 

Using an evv software that’s built for your business is key to your success. Having to retrofit a program to fit your needs has significant room for error. 

We also understand that delegating this task can be daunting, given the impact it has on your bottom line, but it could be a great learning opportunity for your office staff to learn. 

Making sure that they understand best practices, like prompt invoicing and regular audits, can help to alleviate tasks from your plate over time. 

Automating as many tasks as possible

In the era of ChatGPT and virtual assistant firms, there’s no better investment than giving you and your team time back in your day. Recent research has shown that the average business owner needs four more hours in the day to do administrative tasks. Does that resonate with you?

Of course, not all of it is preventable, but billing is one of the aspects of your business that can be optimized through the use of technology. At its core, automation does take the human part out of the billing equation, while also: 

• Improving accuracy 
• Saving time and money
• Reducing errors

This is especially important for billing, when claims have to be precise, filled out in their entirety, and submitted on a recurring basis. The evv software platform you use can assist with these types of tasks, and leveraging technology in this case, can help improve your reimbursement success rate on the first try. 

Some of the tasks that can be automated as it relates to billing include: 

• Generating invoices 
• Submitting claims to payers 
• Following up on denied claims 
• Payment processing

At Caretime, we’ve thought deeply about automation when it comes to saving you time. In our V3 release, we’re excited to announce billing while you sleep. You get to set the billing frequency for each payer you work with and get notified when your claims are sent. 

READ MORE: HOME CARE INSIDER SERIES 

With Dr. Malik Co-Founder America A Care

Instead of worrying about claims, you have the time to provide one-to-one engagement with caregivers and clients, develop relationships in your community, and more. 

Conducting billing audits

Not to put our foot in our mouth, but technology has its flaws too. One way to limit this effect, is ensuring that you or your team conduct regular billing audits. 

Here are a few things to check for: 

• Billing code accuracy: Different payers use classification codes, mostly including CPT and HCPCS. Some have their own specific codes and modifiers. New codes are added each year, and making sure that you’re using the right code is essential to validate the care that your caregivers are providing. 
• Duplicate or missing shifts: We’ve been there. At the click of a button or two, you can create a new shift. That means we have to take the extra step and check for duplicate or missing shifts. 
• Local regulations: Every state is different when it comes to billing for specific services, and they can change on a whim. Stay up to date on where your state stands from a policy standpoint. 

As an example, for Texas home care providers that serve Medicaid clients, they are to bill for services in 15-minute increments. This underscores the importance of ensuring that your caregivers clock-in and clock out promptly, so as to avoid time manipulation regulations (from the DOL) and to ensure accuracy. Texas also makes it clear that claims have to be submitted within 120 days of the service date, making prompt invoicing a necessity. 

An audit may take a few hours each month, but they are well worth the time. 

Keep your billing on its toes, not the other way around. 

The nuances and intricacies of billing in home care can be tedious, but they also serve as guardrails that protect your best interests. These best practices we shared today will keep you on track and paid on time. 

“Billing practices that serve your business aren’t just about numbers. They’re about creating a solid foundation of financial health for you, your team, and for your agency’s future,” Julio Barea, Head of Sales at Caretime. 

Before you get started on looking at your billing dashboard, though, take a deep breath in. You’ll thank us later. When you’re in the headspace to apply these tips, you’ll find that billing becomes seamless. 

With Caretime V3 by your side, you’ll be able to share the impact of billing while you sleep.