With the mandates set forth by the 21st Century Cures Act, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) is now a requirement for Medicaid-funded personal care and home health services. However, EVV has quickly become the industry standard across all payor sources, including private pay and the VA.
Proper EVV management touches every aspect of a home care agency’s operations—ensuring accurate billing, streamlining payroll, and maintaining strict compliance with state and federal regulations. While client care is always priority number one, managing your EVV system should be a close second.
To help your agency get the most out of your software and avoid costly billing delays, here are the top best practices for EVV compliance and management.
1. Properly Configure Your System and Set Expectations
For EVV to function correctly, your fundamental software configurations must be set up for success. This includes defining a reasonable “On Time” window, establishing GPS distance thresholds, and setting up automated alerts like “No Show” notifications. If a caregiver is both on time and on location, their clock-ins and outs will link automatically, saving your scheduling team immense time and effort. 
It is equally important to set clear expectations with your caregivers from day one. A common pitfall is a caregiver clocking in “on time” but from two miles away because they were afraid of being penalized for being late. However, an on-time clock-in from the wrong location is not a valid EVV event and cannot be billed. Make sure caregivers understand that being on location is the most critical component for compliance.
2. Train Your Office Staff First
Many agencies make the mistake of rolling out new EVV tools directly to caregivers without ensuring the back-office staff is properly trained. With thousands of caregivers using EVV apps daily, software vendors cannot field support calls from individual caregivers. Therefore, your office staff must be equipped to diagnose problems and provide local support.
- Create a Test Client: Have your office team and caregivers practice clocking in and out.
- Have Staff Use the App: Office staff should use the app daily for their own shifts to understand the user experience intimately.
- Troubleshoot Proactively: Use onboarding and in-service training to conduct in-person EVV tests so you can fix minor issues before they disrupt client care.
3. Review EVV Data Daily
The single most important rule of EVV management is to review your data frequently. Reviewing EVV should be at least a daily task, and ideally, each hour. If that’s not feasible, set a schedule to check it first thing in the morning, before or after lunch, and then an hour before leaving for the day. Creating a cadence will help make it a habit. If administrators wait too long, they will eventually have to dig themselves out from under a mountain of unlinked EVV events.
Timely management also allows you to document exceptions accurately. For example, if a caregiver clocked in late and 500 feet away from the home, addressing it immediately might reveal that the client wanted to walk to the park across the street before the shift officially started. In EVV, context is everything. If you wait a week to ask the caregiver about a discrepancy, they likely won’t remember why it happened.
4. Overcome Objections with Education
Implementing EVV can be a friction point for caregivers because it requires change. One of the biggest misunderstandings is the fear that EVV is a “Big Brother” tool tracking their every move.
Help generate buy-in by educating them on how the technology actually works: EVV only takes a location snapshot at the exact moment of clock-in and clock-out. It does not track their location between those two events (which would drain their phone battery and create massive data management issues). Ensure they understand that EVV is not an invasion of privacy, but rather a state and federal mandate that protects the agency and guarantees they get paid accurately.
5. Remove Friction and Provide Backups
Instead of presenting EVV as a strict administrative burden, highlight the benefits. Generate excitement by pointing out that EVV means the end of lost, cumbersome paper timesheets.
If you face extreme pushback from a caregiver who absolutely refuses to use a mobile app, have a backup plan ready. Telephony (clocking in via a client’s landline or a designated phone system) can serve as an alternative. While it is more time-consuming than the app, having both options means there is no excuse for a caregiver not to log their shifts accurately.
6. Lean Into Proactive Engagement
Prioritize EVV engagement internally by routinely generating reports. This helps you determine your overall “EVV health,” identify recurring GPS issues, and spot caregivers who consistently clock in from unacceptable distances. Spotting bad habits early allows you to step in with additional coaching.
Externally, engage your caregivers by asking the right questions when things go wrong. If an app error occurs, train them to take a screenshot and ask: What were you trying to do when the problem occurred? Was there a specific error message? This information will help you or your software provider resolve the issue quickly.
The Bottom Line
Failing to proactively manage the EVV process will significantly reduce your billing accuracy and make payroll nearly impossible to calculate. By treating EVV as a vital, daily priority, training your team thoroughly, and getting caregiver buy-in, your agency will be well on its way to seamless compliance and sustainable growth.
Ready to get started? Reach out today and ask the Rosemark team how you can set up EVV for your home care agency.