Today's blog post comes from copywriters Charlotte Bohnett and Erica Cohen. 

 On Tuesday, WebPT hosted a webinar on how to market the PT profession—and why it’s so important. Together Co-founder Heidi Jannenga and Marketing Manager Mike Manheimer tackled topics far beyond business cards and email marketing. They dove into ways you can influence how your patients, the public, and fellow medical professionals perceive the PT industry. Here are some of their marketing action items:

• Increase referrals through relationship marketing
• Flex your media buying muscle
• Discover and market your physical therapy niche
• Compete in today’s therapy realm
• Be one of the users
• Handle good and bad press with composure
• Promote more than your services
• Become a thought leader

Additionally, PT and social media guru Ann Wendel (@PranaPT) live tweeted the webinar. Visit her Twitter, and check her tweets from September 25.

Did you see the webinar? If so, what did you think? If you missed it, no worries. You can watch the whole shebang below.

Today’s blog post comes from PT and compliance guru Rick Gawenda, founder and President of Gawenda Seminars and Consulting, Inc. 

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (HR3630) impacted physical therapists in private practice in terms of the Medicare therapy cap. First and foremost, HR3630 extended the therapy cap exception process through the 2012 calendar year. Secondly, it requires that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) apply the therapy cap limitations to hospital outpatient departments no later than October 1, 2012. The therapy cap for hospital outpatient departments concludes at the end of 2012 unless Congress passes additional legislation extending it into 2013.

So how does this affect the private practitioner? Currently, any outpatient therapy a Medicare beneficiary receives in a hospital outpatient therapy department between January 1 and September 30, 2012, does not count towards the $1,880 physical therapy and speech-language pathology cap. However, beginning on October 1, 2012, any therapy a Medicare beneficiary receives in a hospital outpatient department will now count toward the cap. Additionally, any outpatient therapy the Medicare beneficiary received in a hospital outpatient department from January 1 to September 30, 2012, will be applied retroactively to the $1,880 therapy cap limitations beginning on October 1, 2012.