Maximizing Authorized Hours

HomeTrak Companion includes several tools for managing your scheduling where a particular client or payer has agreed to only pay for maximum number of hours in a period.

First and most importantly, on the client's Authorization (Contract) you will set the maximized number of hours, and the particular period this applies to (i.e. per Day, Week, Month, etc.).

If the authorization has a maximum number of hours, then when you are creating schedules for the client, if any schedule causes the total hours for that period to exceed the authorized hours, a warning will be generated on the schedule, and there are several reporting tools to verify that you are scheduling at or near the total authorized hours by comparing scheduled or billable hours to the maximum authorized.

However, even if you perfectly create your schedules matching the authorized hours, the realities of the caregiver working in the field may result in differences between what you scheduled and the actual hours worked. If the caregiver stays late for one or more schedule, this could result in the total hours being more than what was authorized. In some cases, the payer may not agree to pay any more than what was authorized. To prevent the billed hours from exceeding the authorization, edit the payer's Billing Options and check the option that reads "Act > Sch, Bill Scheduled" which will cause the payer to be billed only up to the scheduled hours on that schedule if the actual hours are higher.

Of course, if a caregiver works less than the scheduled hours, there could be eligible hours left un-billed. To capture those hours, we provide a tool to take those schedules which have their bill hours limited, and increase those hours, up to the actual as long as the maximum authorized hours are not exceeded. (You will find this tool in the Schedule Review Module, "Ready for Billing and Payroll" tab after you finalized your schedules.)

Imagine for example, a Client with a maximum authorized hours of 15 hours per week, and the following three schedules:

Notice how after finalizing, because the bill hours have been limited where they exceed the scheduled hours, only 14 hours would be billed, leaving the billable hours 1 hour less than what is authorized. When the process is run to maximize the billed hours that extra hour is applied to Schedule 2, the first schedule that had been limited. When all of the un-billed hours are used up and the total bill hours reach the maximum of 15, the process stops, leaving Schedule 3 un-adjusted.