MCFI Home Care closes October 31. Eight weeks to absorb its clients well.

The public record is thin and worth stating precisely, because the temptation in a transition like this is to plan against rumors.

• Closure date: October 31, 2026, described as permanent. One manager position separates around December 31 (WARN notice; BizTimes, July 15, 2026; HomeCare Magazine, July 27, 2026).
• Workforce: 106 employees by the WARN count. Excluding 63 new and low-hour workers, about 43 regular staff: 38 caregivers, one RN, two utilization specialists, one community liaison (WFRV, July 19, 2026).
• Transition plan: CFI says it is transitioning "individuals and their preferred caregivers" together and will provide caregivers resources to find a new agency. Expect client-plus-caregiver pairs, not clients alone.
• Payer mix: CFI's home care page lists Medicaid, HMOs, managed care organizations, and private pay, naming Community Care, iCare, and Care Wisconsin. Expect a Family Care and Partnership-heavy caseload with some fee-for-service and self-directed IRIS clients mixed in.
• Not published anywhere we could find: the number of clients, authorized hours, or how many caregivers work with a single client. Do not build a staffing plan on a guessed number.

Everything below is written for the operator who will receive some of this caseload: a Medicaid-certified personal care agency or supportive home care provider in Milwaukee County that already runs Wisconsin EVV. If you are none of those things yet, eight weeks is not enough time to become one and you should be referring, not accepting.

The failure mode in an intake surge is not volume. It is capturing different information for each client depending on who answered the phone, then discovering in week three that half the files are missing the one field that determines whether the client can be served. Fix that with one capture sheet, used for every call, that gets these fields before anything else:

• Program and payer: Family Care or Partnership (which MCO, and the care manager's name and direct number), IRIS (which consultant agency and which fiscal employer agent), Medicaid fee-for-service (T-19), a BadgerCare Plus or SSI HMO, or private pay. This one answer decides the authorization path, the EVV path, and whether you can serve the client at all.
• Current authorization: service codes, authorized hours or units per week, authorization end date, and whether a live-in worker is involved.
• The preferred caregiver: name, contact, hours currently worked with this client, and whether they intend to move with the client. CFI is transitioning pairs; treat the caregiver as part of the intake, not a separate HR event.
• Clinical basics for personal care: the ordering physician, the date of the current physician orders, the most recent RN assessment, the current plan of care, and medication list.
• Practical readiness: address, language, whether the client has a landline (relevant for telephone EVV), and the earliest date they need service to continue without a gap.

Then get a signed release and request the file from CFI in one batch per cohort rather than one call per client: plan of care, physician orders, RN assessment, the Personal Care Screening Tool and personal needs assessment where one exists, and the authorization letter from the payer. Set the client’s expectation on the same call: the date you can start, who will be coming, and that a start date depends on the payer’s authorization reaching you, which you will confirm.

On capacity: a client you accept and cannot staff on November 2 is worse off than one you referred to a neighbor agency on September 20. Decide your ceiling before the first call, in authorized hours per week, and hold to it.

Wisconsin requires EVV for personal care and supportive home care (procedure codes S5125, S5126, T1019, T1020, and 99509) across Medicaid fee-for-service, BadgerCare Plus and SSI HMOs, Family Care and Partnership, and IRIS. The personal care hard launch was May 1, 2023; since then a fee-for-service claim with no matching verified visit denies (edits 1047 “EVV system visit not found” and 1048 “EVV system units do not meet requirements of visit”). Sandata is both the state-provided EVV system and the aggregator that every alternate EVV vendor must feed. Only visits in a verified status are sent on to the payer.

The detail that matters for a transfer is how a client gets into your EVV system in the first place. Per DHS’s EVV Supplemental Guide (P-02745), “client information appears in the provider’s Sandata system based on approved or amended authorization files” from HMOs, MCOs, or the state’s care management system for IRIS, with fee-for-service authorizations flowing from DHS. The two portals exchange information daily, and DHS’s guidance is that if a client with an expected authorization has not appeared within three business days, check with the payer first and then Wisconsin EVV Customer Care (833-931-2035). The consequences, in order:

• Authorization first, client record second, first visit third. A caregiver can still capture a visit for a client not yet in the portal (the app's "unknown visit" option, by client name and MA ID), but it lands as an exception you must work later, and it cannot become a billable, verified visit until the authorization to your agency arrives. Only services that need no authorization by policy may have their authorization record created by the provider inside Sandata.
• Track two dates per client: the day the care manager or ForwardHealth approved your authorization, and the day the client appeared in your portal. If the second is more than three business days after the first, check with the payer that day and then EVV Customer Care, not at month-end.
• Alternate EVV: DHS says certification and setup "may take up to three months," shortened if the vendor is already certified in Wisconsin. Anyone not already live should run this wave on Sandata's state-provided tools.
• Device readiness: the Sandata Mobile Connect app on the caregiver's own phone is the default. Telephone verification needs the client's landline or fixed VoIP. A fixed visit verification device is only issued when services are expected to be authorized for more than 60 days and other criteria are met, so do not plan week one around one.
• Exceptions are cleared in visit maintenance with a reason code and, for some codes, a required note. Clearing an exception does not replace the written documentation your program requires. Work the queue daily for the first two weeks; the first cycle of transferred clients will produce more exceptions than your baseline.
• Live-in workers: DHS does not require EVV for live-in personal care or supportive home care workers, but MCOs, HMOs, and providers may. Confirm per payer at intake.

• Capacity ceiling set, in authorized hours per week, before the first intake call.
• One intake owner, one capture sheet, one shared queue; every transferring client and preferred caregiver logged as a pair.
• Contracted-MCO list checked against each client's MCO; expedite requests made where you are not contracted; referrals made where you cannot be.
• Records release signed and CFI file requested per cohort: plan of care, physician orders, RN assessment, PCST and PNA, payer authorization.
• Authorization requested in your agency's name for every client: MCO care manager, IRIS consultant agency, or ForwardHealth PA with PCST.
• Every caregiver: BID and IBIS complete, Governmental Findings Report filed, orientation and skill demonstrations documented, ForwardHealth Portal record created, app login confirmed, supervised first clock-in done.
• Every client visible in your Sandata portal or alternate EVV system under your authorization before the first scheduled visit; anything past three business days escalated to the payer, then EVV Customer Care.
• Live-in status and each payer's EVV position confirmed per client.
• RN 60-day review dates calendared from each client's first visit.
• Daily exception review through November 13; first claim cycle checked for edits 1047 and 1048.

ClientCentric is operations software for home care and HCBS agencies: one record per client that carries their payer, authorization, caregiver assignment, visit documentation, and billing-ready hours. In a transfer like this one, the useful part is that the intake queue, the onboarding board, and first-visit readiness live in one place instead of three spreadsheets. Visit capture and the connection to the Sandata aggregator remain your EVV system’s job; ClientCentric organizes everything around it. If that would help over the next eight weeks, the demo is open and a walkthrough is a thirty-minute call.