Your Guide To Veterans Affairs (VA) Home Care Agency Management

Did you know that there are more than 16 million veterans in the US?

Many of them will eventually need some type of in-home support. Unlock this unique opportunity to serve those who are served your community while providing meaningful job opportunities for caregivers. 

If you have any interest in serving veterans as clients, you agency should become credentialed with the VA. This process can take some time, but while you’re waiting, it is a great time to market to veterans on a private pay basis (as well as your referral partners). 

Why look at payer source diversification?

Private pay business is great, however, it’s consistently been on the decline year-over-year. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies research found that in “more than two-thirds of the metros [they] studied, the median incomes of GAPS households were too low to afford the lowest-cost price for assisted living.” 

You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, as Debbie Miller, CEO of 52 Weeks Marketing shared in a recent webinar on payer source diversification. Some of those sources can include:

• Veterans
• Medicaid
• Medicare Advantage
• Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI)
• Home Equity Loan

Make your VA marketing plan

Regardless of which payer sources you want to work with, make sure that you have a plan to achieve realistic goals with each one. 

What does that mean? 

1. Connect with care managers and partners that work with veterans on a daily basis to establish and maintain trust, credibility, and more. 
2. Become a resident VA expert. Hold educational seminars that help veterans and their families access care through programs they’re already eligible for, you can even co-brand them with any senior living communities or other partners in your area that might be interested. 
3. Create a marketing plan for the VA. Promote your VA care on your website. Repurpose or create veteran-specific collateral for families as well as referral partners to promote that you can care for veterans and your caregivers have the training and skills to help them age in place. Put a calendar together of when you’re going to visit each referral source and keep tabs of visit notes, etc. in your agency management system. 

You’re never done marketing. There is always an opportunity to spread the word or share a client success story. 

WATCH MORE: Session 4: Speaking Your Referrer’s Love Language

Set your home care agency up for VA care success

Let’s say you’re now credentialed with the VA and officially able to take on new VA care clients. Make sure that you have an operational process that makes care efficient on the backend. 

In a VA environment, you’re dealing heavily with authorizations, lengthy care plans, unique billing codes, and new payer sources. This can complicate your billing routine, and when things are more complicated from a billing perspective, this can result in delays in payment or incomplete payments. 

To get ahead of these, make sure that you audit your agency management system and ensure that it’s working for you:

• Authorization storage and scheduling functionality (billing units, etc…)
• EVV is set up and properly utilized/documentation is done electronically
• Review claims in your dashboard before submission to prevent errors 

Taking care of veterans means taking care of business.

VA care is a great opportunity to give back to others while also giving back to your business. This only happens, though, when every aspect of your business is in sync.

When your caregivers are properly informed on the care plan, the veteran gets great care at home. When your caregivers use EVV on-time, your billers go through the claim quickly, and it gets approved on the first try. When the care is working for the veteran and their case manager is aware, the authorization gets renewed. 

All of these pieces of home care operations come together when the client is put at the center. You too, can make a difference in the lives of many veterans. Start by getting your agency on the list today.