Evv for home health: EVV for home health services, mandatory since January 1, 2023. EVV (electronic visit verification) is the one piece of agency software US law actually requires, so this page starts from the statute rather than a vendor list: what must be captured at every Medicaid-funded visit, which dates the mandate took effect, how state models decide your real options, and where visits fail in practice.
EVV is capture; the plan is still the plan
Medicare's conditions of participation require each plan of care to be reviewed and revised no less frequently than once every 60 days from the start of care (42 CFR 484.60). EVV proves a visit happened; it says nothing about whether the visit matched the plan. Agencies that treat EVV as their record end up with perfectly verified visits against stale plans, which is exactly what a surveyor reads for.
What EVV costs an agency in practice
The visible cost is the subscription; the real costs are training a workforce that turns over quickly, the minutes per visit of failed capture and correction, and reconciliation between the EVV record, the roster and the claim. Weigh vendors on those three, and weigh your own workload with the free worksheets on this site before any demo.
The mandate, dated and cited
Section 12006(a) of the 21st Century Cures Act required states to mandate EVV for all Medicaid-funded personal care services by January 1, 2020 and for home health services by January 1, 2023 (Medicaid.gov). States chose their own models (state-run systems, state-chosen vendors, or open models where the agency picks) so the first question is never which app, it is which model your state runs and what it certifies.
The six data points, and where visits fail
Federal law requires each visit to capture the type of service, the individual receiving it, the date, the location, the individual providing it, and the time the service begins and ends. Visits fail on the mundane: a dead phone at the door, a rural dead zone, a carer clocking from the car. A workable EVV setup is mostly exception handling, and you should ask any vendor to show the exception queue before the capture screen.
Questions people ask about evv for home health
Does Handovra capture EVV?
No. EVV capture belongs to your state-certified system. Handovra keeps the paperwork around the visits: the care plan the visit serves, the policies the carer works under and the audit trail the agency files.
Is GPS tracking of carers required?
The statute requires the location of service delivery, not continuous tracking. States and vendors implement that differently; check your state's EVV policy for what it certifies before believing any vendor's summary of it.
Does EVV apply to private-pay visits?
The federal mandate covers Medicaid-funded personal care and home health services. Private-pay visits are outside it, though many agencies capture them identically because one workflow is cheaper than two.