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AUDIOCONFERENCE ON TAPE OR CD

sponsored by Briefings on Outpatient Rehab Reimbursement & Regulations

presented on April 27, 2006

The Medicare therapy cap went into effect January 1st. Do you know what this means for your facility?

The Medicare Part B therapy cap limits the amount of treatment Medicare patients can receive per year to $1,740 on combined physical therapy and speech-language pathology services, and another $1,740 on occupational therapy. As a result, rehab providers everywhere are scrambling to find out the specifics of this new rule and how it will affect their bottom line. We’ve made this easy with a new 90-minute audioconference, Making the Medicare Therapy Caps Work: Strategies for Surviving the New Rehab Limits.

During the show, speakers Nancy Beckley, MS, MBA and Bubba Klostermann, OT, CVE, CEAS, will answer your most pressing questions, including:

1. How will the therapy cap affect you?
2. What options do you have to minimize financial risk to your clinic?
3. What exceptions are ‘automatic’, and which conditions require an appeal?

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Making the Medicare Therapy Caps Work: Strategies for Surviving the New Rehab Limits will focus on effective strategies for dealing with the Medicare Part B therapy cap. Listeners will learn the history of the cap, ways to tabulate for cap related dollars, how to work with the exceptions process, special documentation requirements, and how to avoid the pitfalls of billing under the therapy cap.

AGENDA:

1. Overview
   1. History of the Medicare Therapy Cap—why now?
   2. What providers are affected by the cap
2. Specific Patient Examples
   1. By diagnosis
   2. By complexity
3. Communicating with patients and physicians
1. When and how to use ABN and NEMB on Medicare forms
4. Tracking units, minutes and dollars
   1. Medicare tools available
   2. Tools in your clinic
5. Treating patients
   1. Ethics—can the patient receive required therapy?
   2. Diagnosis coding and treatment coding under the cap—why is it important?
6. Exceptions Policy
   1. Automatic exceptions—is it as easy as it seems?
   2. Manual exceptions—documenting the case for a manual exception
7. Training for compliance
   1. Fraud and abuse—risk areas under the cap implementation
   2. New documentation requirements to support automatic and manual exceptions
8. Q&A

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

After listening to this audioconference, you will be able to:

1. Create an internal tracking system for billable units
2. Identify patients affected by the cap, and explain to them and physicians what the Medicare therapy cap means in their treatment
3. Understand documentation requirements to support automatic & manual exceptions
4. Understand fraud and abuse issues associated with billing under the cap

BONUS TOOLS included in the materials packet:

1. Sample letters to patients and physicians informing them of implementation of the cap and its process
2. Sample forms of ways to track patient specific cap related dollars
3. Sample letter for requesting a manual exemption

Purchase a tape or CD of the program and listen when you can. It's a perfect training tool for new staff or as a refresher for veteran staff.

MEET THE SPEAKERS:

Nancy Beckley, MS, MBA, president of Bloomingdale Consulting Group in Brandon, FL consults in the area of outpatient rehab.  She has worked with rehab therapy clinics and hospitals in the areas of Medicare program development, survey & certification, managed care and marketing, and has served on Medicare’s Professional Expert Panel on Comprehensive Outpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (CORF), as well as serving as a program advisors to Easter Seals nationally.  She has over 20 years of inpatient and outpatient rehab experience as a clinician, manager and administrator.

Bubba Klostermann, OT, CVE, CEAS, is an Occupational Therapist, Certified Vocational Evaluator, and Certified Ergonomic Assessment Specialist with 30 years experience in Work Injury Rehab and Employers Services. He worked at West Texas Rehab Center from 1976 to 1990.  Since 1990 he has been in private practice in Abilene, Texas and employs 6 Physical Therapists and 2 Occupational Therapists/Certified Hand Therapists.  He served on the Texas Workers Compensation Commission Medical Advisory Committee from 1993-2000 and was named Occupational Therapist of the Year in 1998 and was given the Distinguished Service Award in 2003.

WHO SHOULD LISTEN:

Rehab directors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists.

PROGRAM MATERIALS:

Program materials will be provided with PDF links.

Publisher :  HCPro, Inc
 
Product Types :

• Audioconferences

Departments :

• Other Rehab Products

ORDER CLASS: B_04-27-2006
SOURCE CODE: EHCM