Using Scheduling for Residential Billing

Providers use Staff and Client Scheduling to track billing for group homes.

This method for tracking client attendance in residential programs assumes clients are in attendance most of the time. It follows the exception rule: if 80% or more of the time, what happens is what is scheduled, an effective solution will update the schedules to reflect what actually occurred.

The only edits required are to track absence and reasons.

Day-to-Day Operational Steps

• Maintain daily schedules for individuals by Group Home. This is easy and requires little maintain as attendance changes very little, or not at all.
• Edits are only needed for an “on exception” basis if the individual was absent for some reason, such as hospitalization, with family or guardians, etc.
• All that is required is to update the hours, change the billing code, and document the reason.
• Admin can audit reports and generate billing directly from schedules.
• At the end of the billing period, administration rolls the schedules forward for the next Billing Period.

Advantages Over Using Spreadsheets

• Unlimited history is automatically retained for audits and queries.
• A record of who changed which schedules, and when, is captured automatically.
• Client schedules can be shared across the agency.
• A record of schedule vs. actual is retained and available for cross-checking.

Advantages Over Using EHR

• Using schedules is simple and requires little training.
• The license fees are much lower than for an EHR.