A caregiver forgets to tap “clock out.” Someone in the office notices later, opens the record, and types in the time from memory. Takes thirty seconds. Visit gets billed. Nobody thinks about it again.
Except that thirty-second fix is exactly what’s going to get your agency in trouble.
Under Michigan’s EVV rule, that’s a manual edit and manual edits are what stand between your agency and the 85% clean-capture rate MDHHS expects every quarter. Most agencies that fall short don’t fail because caregivers are skipping visits or the software’s broken. They fail because a bunch of small fixes like the one above add up over three months, and nobody was watching the total until it was too late to do anything about it.
So let’s look at what actually counts against you, why it adds up faster than people expect, and what to do about it before your next review.
What the rule actually says?
Since April 1, 2026, MDHHS Bulletin MMP 26-10 requires agencies and FI/FMS providers that deliver Medicaid personal care and home health services to verify at least 85% of visits electronically, with no manual corrections thereafter. This traces back to the federal 21st Century Cures Act, which requires every state to run some form of EVV.
15% of visits allowed to need a fix sounds like a lot of room. It isn’t, once you see what actually counts as a “fix.”
Seven things that turn a clean visit into an edit
MDHHS isn’t saying you can never have a manual edit. It’s saying they should be rare, not routine. A visit gets flagged the moment:
- The clock-in never registered
- The clock-out never registered
- Neither the clock-in nor the clock-out registered at all
- The system can’t tell which caregiver was there
- A phone-based (IVR) visit is missing the number on file
- A mobile visit is missing GPS
- Someone changes a time the system already recorded
Look at that list again. Not one of those is a software problem. A phone died. Someone forgot to open the app before starting. The signal dropped and the visit never synced within Michigan’s seven-day window. These are just things that happen when real people are doing real work in someone’s home over and over, hundreds of times a month.
Which is the whole point: you can’t fix this with a setting. You fix it by giving people fewer reasons to need an edit in the first place.
Don't Let Manual Edits Cost You Compliance.
See how Caretap Michigan EVV Software helps Michigan agencies track EVV compliance in real time, reduce manual edits, and stay above the 85% threshold.
Why the smaller programs get hit hardest?
Here’s the part that surprises people: the fewer visits you’re running, the less room you have for mistakes.
On a 200-visit month, it only takes around 30 manual edits to drop under 85%. That’s one caregiver going through a rough stretch with a bad phone, or a new hire who hasn’t fully learned the routine yet. On a big program, those same slip-ups get absorbed into a much bigger number and barely register. On a small one, they’re the difference between passing and landing in corrective action.
And if you’re running more than one program or billing more than one payer, this gets worse because Michigan doesn’t blend your numbers. Each one is scored on its own. Your biggest contract can look great and it won’t do a thing to protect a smaller one that’s slipping.
What actually happens if you miss it?
If a program falls below 85%, MDHHS’s framework calls for a formal corrective action plan, mandatory retraining, additional compliance oversight, and reimbursement delays or holds while you sort it out.
There’s a quieter cost too. A visit with an unresolved edit doesn’t always turn into a clean claim, and Michigan has said outright that missing EVV requirements can affect payment. So that one messy clock-out costs you twice: once on your compliance number, and once on the money it should’ve brought in.
The timing is the real problem
Michigan calculates quarterly compliance using the monthly Compliance Reports generated in HHAeXchange, with formal quarterly reviews conducted in January, April, July, and October. If the first time you look at your rate is when that report shows up, you’re looking at a number you can no longer touch. There’s no retraining anyone at that point. The quarter’s done.
The agencies that never worry about this aren’t the ones with zero mistakes. They’re the ones who catch the pattern in week three instead of finding it in the quarterly report.
Three things that actually help
Check your rate every week, by program
Not just your overall number; that hides too much. Look at each program or payer separately on a weekly basis so you can catch one slipping before it costs you.
Make the clean version the easy version
Train caregivers on what a complete visit looks like: app open before care starts, GPS on, signature done, clock-out tapped before they leave. Every edit starts because something wasn’t quite finished. Make finishing it the default, not an extra step.
Make sure the visit actually got there
A visit can look perfect on someone’s phone and still not count if it never made it to HHAeXchange. Check your accepted, rejected, and pending visits regularly so a silent rejection doesn’t quietly eat into your rate.
Where a better setup actually helps?
You can’t buy your way out of this one. It comes down to what happens at the door, visit by visit. But the right system makes that job easier: it can show you a program starting to slip while you still have time to fix it, confirm visits actually reached HHAeXchange instead of leaving that to a spreadsheet, and make clean capture the path of least resistance for your caregivers.
That’s what Caretap’s Michigan EVV tools are set up to do. Show you your clean-capture rate by program in real time, confirm transmissions automatically, and take the guesswork out of “did that visit actually count.”
