"Physical therapy is not a subspecialty of the medical profession and physical therapists are not medical doctors; we are a separate profession that provides a unique service that physicians are unable and untrained to provide."

Letter to the AMA from the APTA, Dec 2009

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Medicare recovery audit contractors

Physical therapists are another healthcare provider that will get caught in Medicare RAC audits, as I posted on June 20th.

Medicare recovery audit contractors (RAC) draws criticism from stakeholders - 06/25/08.

The article states the following...

"The RAC, which, according to Smith, acted in an aggressive manner, also cited a lack of documentation regarding documents that the practice had provided in electronic format."


Once again, the problem stems from a lack of documentation.

Physical therapists need a simple way to document the services they provide.

Physical therapists need to quickly and accurately show the following:

1) Medical Necessity for Physical Therapy

2) Skilled Physical Therapy Services

3) Expected Improvement in a Reasonable Time Frame

How can a Physical Therapy manager do this consistently?

Get Bulletproof Physical Therapy Charts and Notes

Go to Bulletproof-PT-Charts.com

Sleep Well.

Free Tutorial

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Tim Richardson, PT owns a private practice at Medical Arts Rehabilitation, Inc in Palmetto, Florida. The clinic website is at MedicalArtsRehab.com.

Bulletproof Expert Systems: Clinical Decision Support for Physical Therapists in the Outpatient Setting is a manager's workbook with stories, checklists, charts, graphs, tables, and templates describing how you can use paper-based or computerized tools to improve your clinic's Medicare compliance, process adherence and patient outcomes.

Tim has implemented a computerized Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system in his clinic since 2006 that serves as a Reminder, Alerting, Prompting and Predicting CDS using evidence-based tests and measures.

Tim can be reached at
TimRichPT@BulletproofPT.com .

"Make Decisions like Doctors"


Copyright 2007-2010 by Tim Richardson, PT.
No reproduction without authorization.

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American Physical Therapy Association

American Physical Therapy Association
Consistent with the American Physical Therapy Association Vision Statement for Physical Therapy 2020, the American Physical Therapy Association supports exclusive physical therapist ownership and operation of physical therapy services.