"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

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Medicare Discusses New, Unpublished CERT Error Rates Affecting Physical Therapists in Florida

I just sat in on the quarterly Medicare First Coast Service Options (FCSO) Provider Outreach and Education Advisory Group, Part B (POE AG - B) conference call which revealed the newest, unpublished data on physical therapy practices in Florida.

The Medicare TOP PRIORITY for Florida is reducing their CERT error rate which at this time stands at an ALL TIME HIGH of 14.5%.

Most important, the number one cause of this high error rate is INSUFFICIENT DOCUMENTATION.

Specifically, 81% of the CERT error rate was due to one of the following:
  1. The written Plan of Care was not included
  2. The Progress Notes did not include reasons for continuing therapy.
  3. No daily treatment notes
  4. No physician certification of the Plan of Care

Physical therapists can improve their documentation using some simple tools:

Free Tutorial

Get free stuff at BulletproofPT.com

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.

Share PTD with your Peers!

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.