Home health
The contracts every home health agency should have on a list
A home health agency usually runs on more contracts than anyone realizes. Here's a starting list to compare against what you have on file. Yours will differ by state and size.
Going through it once tends to turn up something that renewed quietly.
The list, by type
Patient care: therapy and staffing agreements, any other services under arrangement, lab, medical supplies and equipment.
Revenue: payer contracts with Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care and commercial plans, plus billing, coding or OASIS review if you outsource them.
Systems: the EHR, scheduling and telehealth software, phones, fax, internet, IT support, backups and email.
Operations: answering service, shredding, courier, records storage, payroll and benefits, and background checks.
Facilities and risk: office leases, copier leases, vehicles or mileage programs, and insurance policies.
How to work through it
Take one type a day for a week. For each contract, write down four things: the end or renewal date, the notice period, who owns it, and whether the vendor touches PHI. Anything you can't answer in a minute goes on a short follow-up list.
By the end you'll usually have a few missing signed copies, a few contracts with no owner, and at least one that renewed while nobody was looking.
Keep the follow-up list short, and give each item a name and a date. A long list of open questions with no owner is how reviews stall.
A worked example
Say the review turns up an answering service on a contract signed in 2019 that has renewed every year since, at a rate nobody has compared. The service takes after-hours patient calls, so it handles PHI, and there's no BAA in the file.
That's two fixes: a BAA now, and a price check before the next notice date. Neither would have come up without the list.
What to watch
Therapy and staffing: are the rates and service areas current?
These change often and usually through amendments.
Payers: do you know each plan's rates and end dates?
Payer contracts have their own terms and notice rules, and missing a window can lock in old rates.
EHR and software: what's the term and how are seats counted?
These are hard to leave and often renew for several years.
Do you outsource billing, coding or OASIS review?
Those vendors work inside your patient records, so they need a BAA, and their pricing often scales with volume.
Phones, fax and IT: when did you last check the bill?
These tend to sit untouched for years. Telecom is often one of the easier places to find savings.
Leases, fleet and insurance: who owns those dates?
They often sit with a different person than vendor contracts, so they get missed.
Which of these touch PHI?
Each of those needs a BAA on file.
How Sapphires helps
- Keep every contract type in one place, with a category, service lines and an owner for each.
- Each vendor shows a BAA on file, BAA terms inside the contract, or missing, and a vendor marked as handling PHI stays flagged until a BAA is in place.
- Upload what you already have, one contract at a time, and review what Sapphires reads from each.
- The dashboard shows how many contracts have no owner and what's due in the next 30 days.