Louisiana Providers Shoulder Unnecessary Costs
Louisiana providers are struggling with the costs of the state’s EVV requirement. Although the 21st Century Cures Act allows telephony to verify visits, Louisiana declared that providers must use mobile devices with GPS functionality. And, whether they use the state system or an alternative one, providers must bear the cost of the technology themselves.
Some providers, especially those with many employees, expressed apprehension about the massive cost of the mobile devices. On March 23, 2018, the Department of Health answered these concerns saying: “The state is providing the EVV system free of charge to providers. It is set up to be accessed from a device with internet access (smart phone, tablet, or computer). A provider agency who decides to provide the device for login should consider getting one device per participant, not per DSW.”
The state has not taken any further steps on the matter. Providers that do not spend what is necessary to comply with the EVV mandate may receive Medicaid reimbursements.
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Do you think states should ban telephony for EVV? Should providers bear the cost of the mobile devices or should they ask employees to use their own?
2018 MITC 
EVV should be repealed. It’s federal government overreach that risks the privacy of the recipients, risks alienating Care Providers, who are under paid and in short supply and costs an incredible amount of money to be a solution to a problem that largely doesn’t exist. It’s pork barrel spending at it’s worst. EVV takes advantage of the most severely disabled and senior population for corporate data collection under the guise of stopping fraud and improving quality of care. Another failed big government Obama program.
K.G., thanks for your comment! While your position has certainly been expressed by other providers, especially in Louisiana, as of now there’s few options but to comply with the legislation as best you can. This is why we encourage the providers in each state to be stay informed and get involved as much as possible in terms of their state’s decision making proces regarding interpertation and implementation of EVV.
Fortunately, the 21st Century Cures Act does allow telephony as a form of EVV, which isn’t as invasive as making providers use GPS to verify visits.
I understood in most places you could use hardware tokens fixed at the location where the verification is taking place as an alternative to mobile phones with GPS (the devices produce one time passcodes every 30 or 60 seconds which are unique to the devices themselves). The person providing the care service would confirm they were present by making a note of the code displayed upon arrival and departure.
Another alternative is where a call is made to the landline (however technically this has exactly the same GPS aspects as mentioned in the article).