Physical therapy blog with useful information about physical therapy software, best practices for using technology, physical therapy billing, physical therapy industry events and news from WebPT.
PT blog with with up to date information on how to make the most of your PT management system. Shared comments from PTs are also available on our blog.
We believe in empowering the entire rehab community to achieve greatness in therapy practice. That’s why we created WebPT, an intuitive, web-based EMR solution exclusively for rehab therapists that offers comprehensive documentation, scheduling, practice management, and billing services.
Don’t let the name fool you. WebPT isn’t solely for physical therapists. Rather, it’s for the entire rehab therapy community, and we’ve custom tailored our EMR solution to suit the practice of pediatric therapists, including OTs and SLPs. In fact, pediatric therapists helped create the WebPT Pediatric Module, which automatically loads based on the patient’s age, providing peds therapists the ability to complete specific patient tests for their smallest patients.
Matt is WebPT’s email marketing specialist. He’s an Aries and is pretty sure unicorns are real. His monthly column will cover all things email marketing and how it can help your clinic.
There are plenty of things to worry about as a small business owner—so does it make sense to add email marketing to the list? Absolutely.
For starters, email marketing returned $39.40 for every dollar spent in 2012, according to the Direct Marketing Association. This return far surpassed the next closest marketing initiative ($22.38 through Web search).
And besides revenue, email marketing makes sense in so many other ways, including:
Note: Each month, we will feature a different member of the WebPT family in our new Staff Spotlight blog series.
Growing up on his grandfather’s farm in eastern Tennessee, Mike Clevenger learned the value of a hard day’s work at a very young age. “We had days where the entire family—60 or 70 people with all of the grandkids—would come together, and we had to vaccinate all of my grandfather’s cattle,” he said. “That’s about 300 head of cattle, going one by one. I learned a lot about hard work and teamwork.”
Mike has since traded his boots and overalls for a headset and a computer screen, but his exceptional work ethic remains unchanged. As a Senior Training Representative in WebPT’s Member Care department, Mike now spends his days helping Members learn all the ins and outs of the WebPT application—which is kind of perfect, because he was always naturally drawn to teaching.
“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “But my career path led me to corporate training, which is pretty much the next best thing.”
Before joining the WebPT family, Mike worked as a new hire trainer for Marriott International and as an insurance agent for both Progressive and Travelers. Those positions allowed him to hone his people skills in a business setting, but it’s his innate desire to lend a hand—anytime, anywhere, and to anyone—that makes him such a great fit in his job role at WebPT.
If you’ve been paying attention to our blog posts, our webinars, and functionallimitation.org for the past few weeks, you might think we here at WebPT have gone a little FLR-crazy. And you’d be right. You see, the latest CMS regulation—functional limitation reporting (FLR)—has some pretty severe consequences for noncompliance. Namely, if you don’t comply, you don’t get paid. I don’t know about you, but that seems like an awful lot of pressure. So, we’ve set out to give you all the information and tools you need (including a fully integrated functional limitation reporting solution available within WebPT after May 17) to become an FLR Master. This way, in addition to supreme bragging rights as a result of your mastery, you’ll also get paid. We think that’s kind of a big deal.
With that in mind, here’s a flowchart that walks you through FLR in theory. Essentially, this is everything you’ll need to consider if you’re doing FLR on your own. Holy steps, Batman!
Following this chart is a nifty FLR in WebPT SmartArt graphic. Notice the difference? You don’t have have to be an FLR Master to see that WebPT’s integrated functional limitation reporting solution (coming May 17) is going to make FLR easy peasy.
Once signed by the governor, Missouri Senate Bill 159 will give patients greater access to physical therapy at a lower cost. The Missouri APTA Chapter has been working on pushing this bill through for two years. Great job! Learn more here.
May is Better Hearing and Speech Month. Take a few minutes to educate yourself about different communication disorders and the services speech-language pathologists and audiologists provide. Here's some information on school-based SLPs. You can also follow the #BHSM hashtag on Twitter for more.
And finally, this week is Nurses Week. On behalf of everyone here at WebPT, we'd like to thank all the hard working, caring nurses out there. Thank you for all that you do!
Of course, these are just a few news stories making the rounds this week. You can also find us on Facebook for more PT, OT, and SLP news and updates.
With July 1 right around the corner, we know what’s on your mind: functional limitation reporting (FLR). That’s why we’ve dedicated (almost) this entire month to the ins and outs of G-codes and severity modifiers. But perhaps our discussions have been a little too theoretical for your liking. (We know FLR is one spicy meatball.) If that’s the case, don’t fret. Here’s a more concrete patient example to help solidify your understanding of CMS’s latest regulation. First, some handy dandy references for said example.
References
G-Codes:
Mobility: Walking & Moving Around
We believe in empowering the entire rehab community to achieve greatness in therapy practice. That’s why we created WebPT, an intuitive, web-based EMR solution exclusively for rehab therapists that offers comprehensive documentation, scheduling, practice management, and billing services.
Don’t let the name fool you; WebPT isn’t solely for physical therapists. Rather, it’s for the entire rehab therapy community, and we’ve custom tailored our EMR solution to suit the practice of occupational therapy. Here’s how:
OT-Specific Documentation
WebPT contains a whole separate user profile for occupational therapists. As soon as you select an OT user type, WebPT automatically loads all of our OT-specific items into your clinic’s account.
In addition to OT billing codes and Medicare therapy cap-tracking, WebPT features tons of OT-related tests and tools—like our Activities of Daily Living (ADL) profile; our Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand (DASH) test; our upper extremity functional test; our shoulder pain and disability index; plus a host of special tests geared toward hands and joints. And speaking of hands—OTs specializing in hand therapy (like Laura Berger of Maui Hand Therapy) absolutely love our detailed wrist/hand profile. They also love being able to document and bill for custom orthoses, casts, and splints right in WebPT.
Plus, every document you create in our system will have an occupational therapy label—and your clinic’s name and logo—right at the top of the page, so the source and content of your emailed and faxed documents is immediately clear to referring physicians and other recipients. And you can send out those documents directly from the WebPT system. Cool, huh?
There’s no denying that functional limitation reporting is a little more work to get the same (or less if you consider MPPR) reimbursement and that ignites fear among some in our industry. But you shouldn’t be fearful; you should be frustrated at our own inability to document to a standard that shows our clinical relevance and the amazing outcomes we achieve every day in clinics across the US. We haven’t effectively demonstrated evidence-based practice yet, nor have we properly articulated progress through functional gain. Medicare has been warning us that something like this was coming, and we never ponied up. Now, we have functional limitation reporting (FLR).
I believe we’re moving toward a pay-for-performance structure. FLR is the initial facilitation of that with Medicare patients, and it’s only a matter of time before other carriers follow suit. Essentially, resistance is futile. But why resist? That’s my point in this month’s founder letter: do not resist; do not be afraid; and do not let frustration get the best of you. Because FLR is actually good. How? This reporting affords us the opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and relevancy—and get paid for it. You are essentially already completing these things every day in your clinical practice—now you just have to document it. So get fired up. We need to prove ourselves, and prove ourselves we will. Let’s tell Medicare to bring it on!
With that said, FLR is not about crosswalking a score for an objective measure to a category of severity—in fact, doing so would defeat the purpose of FLR. In reality, FLR is about using your clinical expertise to determine limitation and severity. It’s about your clinical judgment. How many times do you give a patient a self-evaluative outcome measurement tool to complete and the results leave you wondering how he or she came to those conclusions? It’s clear that the patient has an entirely false sense of self, and you know it. FLR requires that you incorporate your clinical judgment to truly assess the severity of a patient’s functional limitation as well as his or her progress. Ultimately, you shouldn't rely solely on a patient’s’ potentially faulty self-assessment as you develop your plan of care. Instead, you should apply your expertise to provide better, more objective treatment.
I cannot stress it enough: you’re proving your worth and getting paid for it. So, stop getting bogged down on modifiers, codes, and progress notes. Really, once you “get it,” FLR becomes second nature in your documentation workflow. (Plus, this month WebPT will launch a fully-integrated FLR feature, so it’ll be super streamlined.) You’re simply telling the story in a way that validates your services.
With FLR, we finally have an outlet to prove that what we do clinically is relevant and deserves payment. We should all view these new requirements as an opportunity for us to finally demonstrate the value of our profession. We’re badasses; we know this. Now let’s show it.
This month is Better Hearing and Speech Month, and with in mind, we thought we'd talk about WebPT and SLP. We believe in empowering the entire rehab community to achieve greatness in therapy practice. That’s why we created WebPT, an intuitive, web-based EMR solution exclusively for rehab therapists that offers comprehensive documentation, scheduling, practice management, and billing services.
Don’t let the name fool you. WebPT isn’t solely for physical therapists. Rather, it’s for the entire rehab therapy community, and we’ve custom tailored our EMR solution to suit the practice of speech language pathologists. In fact, SLPs helped create the WebPT Speech-Language Pathology Module.
Here are just some of the SLP-specific subjective fields you’ll find within WebPT:
Beginning July 1, 2013, CMS is requiring that you complete functional limitation reporting (FLR) on Medicare part A and part B patients in order to receive reimbursement for your services. While WebPT can monumentally help with this task through our soon-to-be-released integrated functional limitation reporting feature, it’s important that you still understand FLR thoroughly, especially because clinical judgment does play a large role in its completion. So, with that in mind, let’s tackle the basics of FLR.
Why functional limitation reporting?
CMS created FLR to collect information regarding beneficiaries’ functions and conditions, the services therapists provide, and the functional outcomes patients achieve. CMS will use all of this information to better understand the beneficiary population that uses therapy services and how their functional limitations change as a result of the therapy they complete. Furthermore, CMS will use the data they collect to reform future payment structures.
Does FLR apply to rehab therapists?
According to the APTA, “All practice settings that provide outpatient therapy services must perform FLR. Specifically, FLR applies to physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language-pathology (SLP) services furnished in hospitals, critical access hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facilities (CORFs), rehabilitation agencies, home health agencies (when the beneficiary is not under a home health plan of care), and in private offices of therapists, physicians, and non-physician practitioners.”
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