HURRICANE FINANCIAL TIPS FOR LONG-TERM CARE
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It is the peak of hurricane season in Florida, and the Sunshine State is recovering from the impacts of Irma. We hope that you, your residents, employees, and their families made it safely through the storm. We want to remind our long-term care friends of some important financial issues in dealing with disasters:
Cash is king
When a major storm is imminent, ensure sufficient cash is on hand with several key staff members or department heads so they can adequately perform their necessary functions. Credit/debit cards don't work well in a world without power.
Documentation
Make sure your office manager keeps an accurate account of expenditures for hurricane-related costs and tracks all receipts before, during and after the disaster, to allow for an interim rate request to be filed for reimbursement from FEMA or AHCA. It's easy to lose control of cash flows during and after a disaster and, unfortunately, some people take advantage of poor oversight when they think no one is looking.
Secure your records
To preserve important financial history and support claims for insurance, tax, and reimbursement, consider offsite storage of critical records. At a minimum, ten years of financial statements and seven years of tax returns and general ledgers should be in a secure, storm and flood-proof location.
Program billing
Placements of 30 days or less are generally considered temporary. If temporary, the transferring facility continues to bill and should pay for the services rendered by the receiving facility. If the transfer is permanent, the receiving facility should bill for services. Providers should act now to ensure their transfer agreements with other facilities are up to date and executed properly to avoid any problems during a disaster.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call us or email your questions using the contact information listed below. Be safe, and we will get through this together.
Sandy Swindling, CPA
Shareholder
sswindling@mslcpa.com
Lorne Simmons
Healthcare Manager
lsimmons@mslcpa.com
Carrie St. John
Shareholder
cstjohn@mslcpa.com
Boris Kushnir
Healthcare Manager
bkushnir@mslcpa.com
