By Tim Rowan, Editor and Publisher of Home Care Technology Report
Let’s call him Jerry. The 79-year-old Medicare beneficiary was discharged from a hospital stay after a bout with pneumonia and an exacerbation of congestive heart failure. He also suffered from acute kidney injury, diabetes, and advanced Alzheimer’s disease. In other words, Jerry was a typical home health patient.
EHS Home Health Care provided extensive care for this fragile patient and submitted claims to its Medicare Administrative Contractor, National Government Services, Inc., which routinely paid the claims without any questions. Subsequently, EHS came under ZPIC scrutiny and was eventually selected by the HHS Office of Inspector General as part of a series of reviews of HHAs. According to the OIG explanation, “Using computer matching, data mining, and data analysis techniques, we identified HHAs at risk for noncompliance with Medicare billing requirements.”
As reported in our news item elsewhere in this week’s issue, OIG demanded 100 EHS patient records and identified overpayments amounting to $55,303 for services provided in calendar years 2014 and 2015. OIG did not stop there, however. It determined that these 100 samples could be extrapolated to $7.5 million in assumed overpayments during those years.
We spoke with former CMS employee and current Medicare appeals consultant Michael McGowan for help understanding what is happening here and why. What we learned is there is a pattern of behavior that permeates CMS’s MAC/ZPIC/OIG system, a pattern that, in recent years, has led to bankruptcy for home health agencies more often than not.
Automatic Denial Policy
In Jerry’s case, and in the overwhelming majority of the denials adding up to the final audit finding of $55,303, patients were found by OIG medical reviewers to not meet the Medicare homebound requirement. No, these investigators did not visit Jerry in person. They examined physician Face-to-Face documents and found them to insufficiently justify homebound status. CMS has admitted that the rate of claim denials has skyrocketed since its Face-to-Face rule – far more restrictive than Congressional intent as found in the language of the Affordable Care Act – was implemented in 2011.
OIG reviewers determined Jerry was not homebound because he lived in a residence without barriers and was able to walk with a walker or cane.
EHS hits back
Faced with bankruptcy, EHS decided not to go quietly into that good night. In a 12-page comment, EHS’s law firm countered every OIG accusation and refused to comply with all four OIG recommended operational cures. Instead, they described errors in every example OIG gave to justify both the initial fine and the $7.5 million assumption. There were several examples in the OIG accusation but, regarding the patient we are calling Jerry, the attorneys said: (emphasis added)
“OIG’s reviewers repeatedly failed to view the medical record as a whole and appeared to allow individual clinical factors to drive the conclusion that a particular beneficiary was not “homebound.” In doing so, OIG’s reviewers applied —and appeared to rely exclusively or primarily on—criteria for evaluating homebound status simply not contained in the Medicare regulations and often ignored “longitudinal clinical information” that supported the level of care rendered by EHS. For example:
OIG reviewers found this 79-year-old beneficiary was not homebound because (i) on several infrequent occasions of short duration, the beneficiary attended medical appointments for his spouse, and (ii) the beneficiary ambulated 200 feet without an assistive device, suggesting that leaving the home did not present a considerable or taxing effort.
Determining homebound status based on these factors alone is wholly incongruous with the Medicare regulation and manual guidance. In fact, the Medicare manual is clear that a beneficiary is not disqualified as being homebound for leaving the home, even for non-medical purposes, if the trips are infrequent and of short duration. In addition, nothing in the Medicare rules suggests it is permissible to discount homebound status based on technical measurements such as the number of feet a patient can ambulate.
Had the OIG reviewers considered the complete record, they would have seen a 79-year-old beneficiary who, just prior to receiving home health services, was hospitalized with pneumonia and an exacerbation of congestive heart failure. The patient also had multiple co-morbidities, including but not limited to, acute kidney injury, diabetes, and advanced Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s disease itself, without his precipitating acute conditions, severely restricted the beneficiary’s cognitive function relative to orientation, memory, attention, problem-solving, and judgment.
The combination of the acute medical incidents and his chronic conditions made it not only impossible for the individual to leave the home without his spouse’s assistance, but also made it impossible for his spouse to leave him home alone while she attended appointments outside the home. …When considered in its entirety, the medical record supports a finding of homebound status under the Medicare standards.
Why do they try so hard to deny?
We know this orientation toward “deny if you can, pay if you must” exists. It took some digging to find out why. This is how our Medicare appeals consultant explained it to us.
CMS awards lucrative contracts to a multitude of collection agencies to take a second look at healthcare claims after they are paid by MACs, searching for evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse that threatens the lifespan of the Medicare Trust Fund. Some of these contracts amount to as much as $85 million per year for each of six Unified Program Integrity Contractors (UPIC). CMS justifies the expense citing historical data that UPICs, formerly known as ZPICs, return an average of $7 for every dollar paid them. According to the DC law firm Liles & Parker:
ZPICs have traditionally asserted that, unlike their Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) counterparts, they are not “bounty hunters.” They base this argument on the fact that, unlike RACs, ZPICs are not paid on a contingency basis. Instead, ZPICs are directly compensated by CMS on a contractual basis.
Nevertheless, common sense tells us that if ZPICs are unsuccessful at identifying alleged overpayments, the chances of a ZPIC’s government contract being renewed are likely to be diminished. Additionally, experience has shown us that, despite the fact that ZPICs are expected to adhere to applicable Medicare coverage guidelines, a ZPIC’s interpretation and application of these coverage requirements may greatly differ from your understanding of the same provisions. In recent years, ZPICs have been aggressively pursuing a wide variety of enforcement actions.
We also asked longtime home healthcare attorney Elizabeth Hogue to weigh in on the EHS case. She made it clear this must not be regarded as an isolated case.
“The essential problem for home health agencies and other post-acute providers is that they are non-residential providers. When agencies close, CMS does not have to deal with what happens to the patients because there are plenty of other agencies to absorb them.
“To be direct, post-acute providers are the ‘low hanging fruit’ for regulators and enforcers! It’s so relatively easy!
“Nonetheless, it cannot be in the taxpayers best interest for businesses to close and for jobs and recoupments to be lost. If the general public really understood, they would be horrified!”<height=”150″ width=”100%” text=”The essential problem for home health agencies and other post-acute providers is that they are non-residential providers. When agencies close, CMS does not have to deal with what happens to the patients because there are plenty of other agencies to absorb them. To be direct, post-acute providers are the “low hanging fruit” for regulators and enforcers! It’s so relatively easy! Nonetheless, it cannot be in the taxpayers’ best interest for businesses to close and for jobs and recoupments to be lost. If the general public really understood, they would be horrified!�”></height=”150″>
McGowan agrees, “Nearly every time CMS bids out a ZPIC/UPIC contract and selects a winner, one or more losing bidders challenge the award in court. These are coveted, highly contested contracts. If they don’t perform, if they don’t hit that 7-to-1 payback, they could be replaced, costing hundreds of jobs and slashing corporate profits.”
CMS harmed as much as HHAs
This, however, while a life or death problem for HHAs, is not the worst consequence of the environment CMS has allowed to develop, McGowan emphasizes. “When a contractor, or in the EHS case the OIG behaving the same way, extrapolates from a reasonable overpayment for which it has evidence to an assumed overpayment 135 times higher, for which it has no evidence other than math, there is no way the HHA defendant can meet that demand. Instead, most HHAs declare bankruptcy and close their doors.” He described three consequences when this happens:
- Tens, if not hundreds, of employees lose their jobs and the owners lose any equity they have built in their business.
- The UPIC/ZPIC is able to report the assumed overpayment amount, in our example $7.5 million, on its “win” column, even when it does not collect from a bankrupt HHA.
- CMS receives nothing.
“Obviously, CMS cannot allow this situation to continue,” McGowan opines. “What good does it do to force an agency to close? Why not take the $55,000, investigate sufficiently to determine the cause is sloppy documentation and not criminal fraud, and help the HHA develop an improvement plan? Better yet, why not create a Face-to-Face document instructional program for referring physicians, since they seem to be the bulk of the problem? The investigating contractor and attorneys on both sides are the only winners here. All the entities involved in providing or paying for actual patient care are the losers.”
There is one additional flaw in this method to curb fraud, waste, and abuse. Note that the OIG investigation covered claims from 2014 and 2015. Considering the rate of home health staff turnover, not to mention referring physicians who retire or relocate, how many people responsible for inadequate documentation would be touched by a correction plan that begins in 2019 or 2020? A rhetorical question but one worth asking.
Based on conversations with former colleagues, McGowan remains optimistic that CMS will not allow this situation to survive much longer. “Why would they?” is his own rhetorical question. “The HHA closes down, beneficiaries wind up with fewer care choices, and CMS, instead of reaping a $7 to $1 gain, gets nothing.”
One might reasonably add one more suggestion to McGowan’s recommendations, “Better yet, why not create a Medicare policy instructional program for OIG/UPIC/ZPIC medical reviewers?”
For further research, see 42 CFR § 405.371 – Suspension, offset, and recoupment of Medicare payments to providers and suppliers of services.
©2019 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com
Dear Healthcare at Home Colleague,
Our lead news story this week concerns an investigative finding by the HHS Office of Inspector General that extrapolated a $55,000 overpayment into a $7.5 million repayment demand. You will want to read how the accused Illinois HHA is fighting back in court. Many agencies hit with unreasonable overpayment demands have chosen the Chapter 11 route and closed their doors. Click below on “OIG Uses Homebound Status and Skilled Care Need to Target Providers” to read the official OIG statement. (more…)
By Tim Rowan, Editor & Publisher of Home Care Technology Report
The CMS “Review Choice Demonstration (RCD) for Home Health Services” will begin June 1, 2019 in Illinois. The program is an improved version of the Pre-Claim Review demonstration that began in Illinois in 2016 but was aborted in April, 2017 before CMS pursued its original plan to expand the demonstration to four additional states.
by Darcey Trescone, RN, BSN
PDGM is still a topic of conversation as both vendors and providers continue to prepare for its launch January 1, 2020. We were able to catch up with a few of the vendors recently to learn more about their perspectives and preparations for PDGM.
PDGM Impact to the Industry
[The first of these two vendors-Mike Kramer, SVP Home Care and Hospice at Casamba told us: “The level of impact really depends on the particular home care provider. If the home care provider reacts appropriately to PDGM, the new requirements can help healthcare at home providers to maintain and potentially improve reimbursement.. . ”
Kramer continues, “PDGM is certainly driven by diagnoses. Close attention needs to be paid to the coding aspect of what the providers are doing when assigning the primary diagnosis and all co-morbidities for the patient receiving services. This is going to require providers be in a position to defend the diagnosis coding and services they deliver within their clinical documentation.”
“Getting all the services to the patient’s and prioritizing the needs of that patient in the first couple of weeks of care is going to be important. We need to focus on the clinical needs and getting them stable, but we forget that there are other factors, beyond nursing, that are driving this patient to have problems. It’s going to require the whole home health multidisciplinary team to decrease hospitalizations,” added Melissa Cooper, Chief Clinical Officer at Thornberry Ltd.
Ms. Cooper continued with more company detail:
“Many are concerned about the financial aspect of PDGM, not really concentrating on how we are going to achieve goals in 30 days where we can. Thornberry is doing many things, one is further education on the multidisciplinary team aspect of PDGM thru emails, blogs and educational sessions. If we are really going to be successful and partner with the patient and care community to improve patient outcomes it will require nursing, therapy, social work and the home care aide. Ensuring that these disciplines are established if needed and visits planned earlier in the patient’s care is key. Additionally, we have launched a PDGM evaluator update to help our customers look at the data that is coming in now and model for them what that reimbursement will be in the PDGM world. We believe along with monitoring reimbursement, working with our customers to focus on their top diagnoses, care practices in place and the number of disciplines and visits to achieve positive outcomes for their patients they will drive success.”
Casamba’s Kramer added, “We have been doing webinars with our customers that review the PDGM regulations along with the existing and new features available in our product. Since the first of the year we have been working closely with the CMS technical specifications and our customers to ensure PDGM readiness. PDGM education is important and we will continue to do what we can to support the industry.”
“Much work needs to be done in a relatively short period of time to ensure clinicians are up to speed on the regulatory changes going forward,” said Billie Nutter, president of Casamba. “What’s encouraging is that our customers’ leadership believes they have a strong knowledge base to leverage and help prepare their staff. Using that understanding to educate practitioners will be critical during this transition to PDGM.”
Kramer continued, “PDGM will be a featured topic at our May user group. We will be sharing what trends we have seen across our customer base with the analysis we have done. We are all trying to improve patient outcomes and decrease hospitalizations. The most cost-effective environment to provide care is in the home, and that is where our patients and families would rather be. The good news is that when an episode has reimbursement for both 30-day billing periods, our customer’s reimbursements appear to be the same or better under PDGM based on our analysis.”
PDGM Innovations
Mike Kramer described more services Casamba is preparing:
“We have built our own PDGM grouper and this allowed us to provide our customers with a PDGM analytical review tool within Casamba. The tool provides a comparison of the actual PPS revenue and the projected PDGM revenue for each 30-day period from January 1, 2018 to present.
“Our goal was to show our customers in real time how their reimbursement would be affected under PDGM with the current patient population and care practices they have in place. The tool provides enough detail to help our customers identify adjustments in care practices and then monitor what projected PDGM reimbursements would be based on these modifications. This approach helps our customers gain insight into future outcomes and pinpoint specific clinical themes where behavioral process changes most impact positive patient outcomes.
“We have built in alerts to the user when a disqualified diagnosis is chosen and warnings around potential LUPA scenarios. Additionally, within our clinical documentation, there are a number of links between an order and what needs to be documented to support that order. In reverse, when documentation is completed the system provides a list of orders required for physician signature.”
Thornberry’s Cooper added,
“We have a couple of new tools. One that we are excited about is our Smart Goals. SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Based. They are goals which allow the clinician to define a time frame of achievement for the patient. The goals are assessed at each visit done by the clinician to make sure they are relevant and obtainable. The goal dates can be ended with a date of achievement, marked as ongoing or the date can be modified to allow more time for achievement. The clinician’s dashboard notifies them five days before the goals due date. There is also a companion supervisor’s report which allows supervisor’s to monitor all patient’s on census for over due goals. The road map for our goals leads us to qualifying diagnosis driven goals and interventions. With PDGM on the horizon it is important to have standardized protocols and interventions to achieve consistent goals. These goals are multi-disciplinary.”
“Our interactive dashboard in NDoc will give users a warning about patients nearing the end of the 30-day period and, based on the PDGM model, will highlight those patients that are potential LUPAs. This allows the customer to evaluate in advance if the patient is truly a LUPA case or if more services are needed. As well, we have delivered managerial oversight that shows the patient population on service, where they are in their cert period and who is not meeting goals. With built in drill downs by clinician and patient the manager can easily guide the care team.”
PDGM remains a highly relevant topic for providers and vendors both. These regulatory changes are continuing to feed thought leadership and innovation in home care technology.
©2019 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report.homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechre
by Elizabeth Hogue, Esq.
In a blog dated May 2, 2019, Seema Verma, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced that major changes have been made to the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) Program. According to Ms. Verma, changes were made primarily in response to numerous complaints from providers. In response, the “RAC-related provider burden” has been reduced to an “all-time low.” Here are examples of key improvements made to the RAC Program:
Better Oversight of RAC’s
- RACs will now be held accountable for their performance by requiring them to maintain a 95% accuracy rate. RACs that fail to maintain this rate will be subject to a progressive reduction in the number of claims they are allowed to review.
- RACS are required to maintain an overturn rate of less than 10%. Failure to maintain this rate will also result in progressive reductions in the number of claims RACs can review.
- RACs will not receive contingency fees until after the second level of appeal is exhausted, instead of immediately after denials and recoupment of claims, to help ensure that RACs’ decisions are correct before they are paid.
Reducing Provider Burden and Appeals
- RACs are now required to audit proportionately to the types of claims providers submit instead of allowing RACs to select certain types of claims to audit.
- RACs will conduct fewer audits for providers with low claims denial rates.
Providers now have more time to submit additional documentation before repaying claims. A 30-day discussion period after an improper payment is identified means that providers do not have to choose between initiating discussions about denials and filing appeals.
Increasing Program Transparency
CMS will regularly seek public comment on proposed RAC areas for review before the reviews begin, which will allow providers to voice concerns about potentially unclear policies that are part of proposed reviews and to better prepare for RAC reviews before they begin.
RACs must enhance their provider portals so that it is easier for providers to understand the status of claims.
While the above changes are certainly welcome, providers may conclude that they are too little, too late – especially those providers who have appeals pending for many years because of the backlog of appeals at the ALJ level. Or worse yet, those providers who have been put out of business! It seems fair to say that some of the changes and the unfair outcomes they intend to correct should have been put in place when RAC audits were initiated.
©2019 Elizabeth E. Hogue, Esq. All rights reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any form without the advance written permission of the author. Reprinted in Home Care Technology: The Rowan Report by permission.
By Tim Rowan, Editor & Publisher of Home Care Technology Report
A recent Microsoft newsletter provided us with some news your IT Department already knows but that all Windows 10 users should hear.
Rowan summarizes must-do’s by Windows 10 users, as follows:
What to know before and after installing the Windows 10 May 2019 Update
- Unplug and remove your external drives and memory cards.
Users receiving notices that “This PC can’t be upgraded to Windows 10” when attempting to install the update should remove external drives and memory cards, as they can block systems from installing the update. The update process can cause drives—including internal drives—to be assigned different drive letters after installation. - You’ll need more free space to install the May 2019 update
Microsoft has increased the amount of free space needed to install the May 2019 update to 32 GB, an increase from the 16 GB needed for 32-bit versions and 20 GB for the 64-bit versions, which ZDNet’s Liam Tung called “entirely unrealistic.” Microsoft is also introducing “reserved storage,” allocating 7GB of the disk to ensure that future updates can be installed smoothly. - Check your privacy settings after installation
Previous updates to Windows 10 reset privacy settings to the defaults, which share a relatively high amount of usage and analytics data with Microsoft. Though Microsoft has attempted to be more transparent with privacy settings, the spontaneous reset of privacy settings can be an unwelcome surprise. Be sure to change your privacy settings in Windows 10 after updating. - The update brings more robust protections for Spectre and Meltdown
Microsoft is bringing Google’s retpoline patches to Windows 10, which should finally bring robust and performant patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Microsoft’s previous attempts at patching these vulnerabilities have been plagued with issues, as patches caused random reboots, blue screens, and inadvertently made it easier to exploit the vulnerabilities. - Forcing periodic password changes may become a thing of the past
Microsoft is questioning the wisdom of using Group Policy to enforce password expiration. The company is seeking public comment on the practice, arguing that the practice is outdated and ineffective. As TechRepublic’s Lance Whitney put it, “If you have evidence that [your] password had been stolen, you would change it immediately rather than wait for some predefined expiration date,” while Microsoft colorfully noted that “if your users are the kind who are willing to answer surveys in the parking lot that exchange a candy bar for their passwords, no password expiration policy will help you.”
New features coming to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update
- Streamlining Start, Search, Accounts, and Sign-In
- For new accounts, Windows 10 reduces the number of icons and groups applications into folders more than in previous versions, and makes them easier to remove. Likewise, there are now less hoops to jump through to uninstall built-in applications.
- Search is now less cluttered, with filter icons at the top, the five most frequently used apps in the center, and recent documents and browsed pages at the bottom. Cortana has been separated from Search, now allowing people to remove the Cortana button from the taskbar.
- The Sign-In options panel in Account Settings has also been streamlined, with an option to use a personal security (FIDO2) key added.
- DPI Awareness includes better support for Hi-DPI apps & displays
- As notebook computers increasingly use Hi-DPI displays, apps may not perform as expected when connecting external displays. Since Windows 10 Version 1803, Microsoft offers to fix apps without having to log out of Windows, so this fix is now applied automatically, unless the features is manually deactivated. It is also possible to view and sort apps by DPI awareness in the Task Manager, as a column for that attribute has been added.
- Other visual enhancements, including a “Light Mode” to complement the darker theme that shipped with Windows 10, were also added.
- You can safely access Linux filesystem data inside File Explorer
- Users of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will be able to access, move, and copy data stored inside WSL instances using File Explorer, making it easier for developers using WSL to manage files in those environments without relying solely on the command line, or third-party kludges that can lead to data loss or corruption.
- Application sandboxing allows for safe app test driving
- On Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, Windows Sandbox adds a containerized environment for running untrusted executables. The sandbox is destroyed after the app is closed. This feature relies on hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x, and equivalents) present on modern hardware, though this may require manually enabling these extensions in the system BIOS. Likewise, the Windows Sandbox feature itself must be enabled using the Windows Features dialog in the Control Panel.
- Windows Defender System Guard brings advanced security feature
- The Windows Defender System Guard container, formerly called Virtualization-Based Security or Virtual Secure Mode, isolates the Windows kernel to shield against cases where it may be compromised. Using Hyper-V, secure “memory enclaves” are used to isolate signed code executed at a higher virtual trust level, preventing malware from editing firmware and boot components of Windows.
- Likewise, Windows Defender Application Guard is a security mode for Microsoft Edge, which allows users to visit untrusted websites without worrying about malicious code on those websites gathering system information or downloading malware onto the computer. An extension exists for Chrome and Firefox that loads untrusted websites in the guarded Edge instance. It is unclear if or when this feature will support the new Chromium-based Edge, still under development.
Features not coming to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update
With the Windows Insider early-access program, Windows development now happens far more out in the open than was the case with prior versions, leading to public-facing experiments that may not be adopted in final releases.
- Plans for “Windows Sets” app data grouping abandoned
- Sets, a Windows management feature that allows users to group app data, websites, and other information in tabs, appears to be abandoned in the update, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, who noted that significant engineering work would be required of the Edge and Office teams to implement the feature, which was not well received in public testing with Windows Insiders. Users who want a feature like Sets can turn to the Stardock “Groupy” application, which provides similar functionality.
©2019 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Microsoft’s May, 2019 newsletter. Reprinted by permission in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com
By Tim Rowan, Writer & Editor of Home Care Technology Report
[This company says that this change represents an important step forward in bridging the gap between out-of-hospital care providers and the broader care ecosystem, solving the problem for when providers lose visibility into their patients’ care when they enter a post-acute care setting.
However, now through CommonWell, Brightree Home Health and Hospice customers will be able to quickly and easily retrieve documents and data from a patient’s previous hospital and physician visits within their EMR solution. They can also share patient updates with physicians and other providers in the CommonWell network who serve that patient. This seamless information exchange will help home health and hospice agencies improve their efficiency, as well as patients’ care coordination and quality of care.
More information about Brightree and its survey of referring partners who say that they would select a post-acute care delivery partner based on their ability to interoperate with the referral source. More details are provided about Brightree at the end this HCTR article.
©2019 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article was reprinted in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report from a Brightree press release. homecaretechreport.com. editor@homecaretechreport.com.
By Tim Rowan, Editor & Publisher of Home Care Technology Report
Netsmart Executive VP Kevin Scalia notes that, within this new alliance, McBee leadership and staff will remain intact and will continue to operate at their Wayne, Pennsylvania headquarters. McBee behavioral health clients will gradually be reassigned to Netsmart’s consulting team, which has specialized in Revenue Cycle Management and operational consulting for the behavioral health sector for decades, long before Netsmart entered the home health, home care, and hospice sectors with the Allscripts Home Care division acquisition by Netsmart in 2016.
[Distinctive contributions that each of the two teams bring to this joint effort are noted in detail in this article. As described by Scalia,“Our two sales teams will work together to bring us clients in all sectors…But they will be assigned to the appropriate specialists in Senior Living, Behavioral Health, Home Health, Hospice and Private Duty Home Care. This acquisition builds upon and expands the Netsmart suite of consulting and managed services by adding industry expertise and resources specifically geared toward strategic consulting, change management, revenue cycle management, advisory and education services. When you partner with someone like [McBee president] Mike Dordick, who gets calls from CMS personnel seeking his advice, you know you are working with a respected authority.”
“The healthcare industry is progressing, and providers must be able to count on their business partners to be in sync to deliver the tools and services to support these rapid changes,” said Netsmart CEO Mike Valentine. “Together with McBee, we can help these same providers be successful today, tomorrow and beyond.”
More details about this alliance are noted , as follows. For one . TripleTree acted as the exclusive strategic and financial advisor to McBee for this transaction. A good amount of details is provided about McBee’s contribution to the alliance,
About McBee and Netsmart
McBee is a health care services and consulting firm that delivers financial, operational, and clinical consulting services exclusively to healthcare providers across the continuum of care.
Extensive details are also provided about Netsmart which designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), solutions and services to providers of behavioral health, care at home, senior living and social services. More than 1,700 associates work with 600,000+ users in more than 25,000 organizations across the U.S.www.ntst.com
©2019 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com
