Nov 2: Two Courts Ruled that Medicare improperly denied physical therapy services. We all know that medicare policy is to let debilitated patients decline and then reimburse for skilled services rather than let “maintenance” prevent debilitation but fortunately two courts and a letter to our President is trying to unravel this enigma.
Nov 2: The largest turnaround in the House occurs thru the general election in large part due to the overwhelming disapproval of the population to the Affordable Care Act that was passed without anybody really understanding it.
Nov 3. The final Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Rule is released and affirms a new multiple procedure payment reduction (MPPR) aimed at outpatient therapy services (yes, it is “Physician Fee Schedule Rule”). This will reduce payments in the 7-9% range but this does not take into account the increased compliance and procedural cost of implementation.
And so begins the Private Practice Section meeting in-appropriately enough Washington DC this week (#PPS for those tweeting).
The good news of course is that PT’s by their nature are the most resilient, optimistic bunch of folks to be around and we are accustomed to illogical payment and regulatory policy coming out of Washington so none of this will detract from the great programming and events that the section’s leadership consistently produces.
Hope to see many of you here this week. Please stop by the EIM booth and consider attending Friday afternoon’s seminar by John Childs and myself on Clinical Excellence thru World Class Customer Service. I will start it out with an interesting case study of a most flamboyant character who applied retail principles to stodgy banking. Is there anything from it that we can apply to physical therapy?
larry@physicaltherapist.com
@physicaltherapy twitter
