Home and Post-Acute Care Software: A Complete Guide

Home and post-acute care software covers the systems that home health agencies, hospices, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), senior living operators and community care providers use to admit patients, schedule staff, document visits, meet reporting rules and get paid. These settings work differently from hospitals: care happens in homes and facilities, staff are often mobile, and payment depends on detailed patient assessments. This guide explains the main systems, the rules that shape them and which of our articles to read next.

Many of these providers also started their digital journey later than hospitals. Post-acute care, hospice and home and community-based providers were not eligible for the federal EHR incentive payments under HITECH, and they lag in EHR adoption and interoperable exchange as a result, according to the ONC 2022 Report to Congress.

Start here

1. Post-Acute Care Technology: Systems, Rules and Where AI Helps: the landscape across home health, hospice, SNFs and rehabilitation.
2. CareOps Explained: A Practical Guide for HealthTech Teams: how care operations connect referrals, scheduling, documentation and billing.
3. Care Coordination Platforms: Features, Data and Where AI Fits: shared care plans, tasks and communication across teams.
4. Care Transition Management Guide for HealthTech Leaders: moving patients safely from hospital to post-acute care and home.

Find the right article for your goal

Settings and the systems they use

Rules that shape the software

• Electronic visit verification (EVV): the 21st Century Cures Act requires states to use EVV for Medicaid personal care services, due January 1, 2020, and home health services, due January 1, 2023, with later dates for states granted good faith exemptions. Systems must capture the type of service, the person receiving it, the date, the location, the person providing it and the start and end times, according to Medicaid.gov.
• Standardized assessments: the IMPACT Act of 2014 requires SNFs, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals to submit standardized patient assessment data through their existing tools, such as MDS for SNFs and OASIS for home health, according to CMS.
• Hospice reporting: on October 1, 2025, CMS replaced the Hospice Item Set with the Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) tool, according to CMS.
• Home health payment: under the Patient-Driven Groupings Model, effective January 1, 2020, Medicare pays home health in 30-day periods rather than 60-day episodes, according to a CMS overview.
• Value-based purchasing: the expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model applies to Medicare-certified home health agencies nationwide and adjusts Medicare fee-for-service payments by up to 5% up or down based on quality performance, according to CMS.
• Discharge planning: a 2019 CMS rule requires hospitals to help patients choose a post-acute care provider using data on quality and resource use that matches the patient's goals, according to the Federal Register.
• Privacy and security: systems that handle protected health information fall under HIPAA, and vendors need a business associate agreement with each covered entity they serve.

The interoperability gap

Exchanging data with hospitals and physicians remains one of the hardest parts of post-acute software. In 2016, 64% of SNFs used an EHR, but only 7% could send, receive, find and integrate patient information electronically, according to an ONC data brief. Adoption has improved since then, but referral packets still often arrive as faxes or PDFs. Plan for FHIR and HL7 v2 connections, document intake and patient matching from the start; our EHR integration and interoperability guide covers the standards.

Planning a software project

Start with the workflow that costs you most: missed visits, late documentation, denied claims or slow referral intake. Map each step from referral to payment, note which system owns each piece of data and where staff re-enter information. Build for mobile staff with poor connectivity, keep EVV and assessment data accurate at the point of care, and test billing rules for each payer before launch. Where AI helps, such as drafting visit notes, matching caregivers to visits or flagging patients at risk of readmission, keep a clinician or coordinator in the loop and measure the results.

If you are building software for home or post-acute care, see our healthcare engineering services.

Conclusion

Home and post-acute care software has to fit mobile work, detailed assessments, EVV and payer rules, and patchy data exchange with hospitals. Start with the four core articles above, use the goal table to go deeper on home care, hospice, SNFs, senior living or discharge planning, and plan interoperability and compliance from the first sprint.

If you want help planning or building home or post-acute care software, book a consultation with Ekipa's HealthTech engineers.

Frequently asked questions

What is post-acute care?

Care after a hospital stay or for ongoing needs, delivered by home health agencies, hospices, skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals.

What software does a home health agency need?

Usually an EHR with OASIS documentation, scheduling, visit verification, billing and tools for patient communication.

What is EVV?

Electronic visit verification. Medicaid requires it for personal care and home health visits, capturing who provided which service to whom, where and when.

What is the difference between OASIS, MDS and HOPE?

They are the CMS assessment tools for home health (OASIS), skilled nursing facilities (MDS) and hospice (HOPE).

Why is interoperability harder in post-acute care?

Many post-acute providers were not eligible for federal EHR incentives, so EHR adoption and data exchange with hospitals have lagged.