How can long-term care providers make real improvements in the care delivered to those in need? It’s important for providers to put participants and their families front and center, rather than focusing...
The G-codes are here for payment claims — ready or not
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
May 23, 2013
Effective July 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will begin rejecting claims received for Medicare Part B patients that do not include the new requirement of G-coding. That really means providers...
Long-term care providers ready to deal with ‘doc fix’
By
James M. Berklan
May 15, 2013
If you hang around long enough, you learn there are only two things long-term care providers fear after Republicans and Democrats. That would be hospitals and doctors.
The perfect programming matrix
By
Charles de Vilmorin
May 08, 2013
To achieve a higher quality of life and longer periods of stay, retirement communities should consider a robust and fully comprehensive programming strategy. To address the needs of residents, they should...
Medically Complex Medicare Part B
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
May 08, 2013
While CMS tries to figure out how to proceed with the manual medical review process, we continue to track our caps and apply our modifiers. In the meantime, has anyone noticed how our typical Medicare...
Breaking down the binaries
By
Shannon McIntyre Hooper
May 03, 2013
We have a tendency to think of someone as either healthy – and therefore without an urgent need for our healthcare or senior care system – or sick – and therefore high-cost and in a state...
Looking to open eyes about ‘observations’
By
James M. Berklan
May 01, 2013
Bully for provider groups pulling out the stops to draw attention to the ludicrous mishandling of “observation stay” designations by many hospitals. One prong of the plan is to have providers...
Reviewing the top 10 errors in rehab documentation
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Apr 23, 2013
As a long-term care therapy consultant, I work on a lot of claim reviews and denials management with my clients. I’ve also read a lot of peer-review research articles related to this subject, and...
The lessons of Fuaja Singh
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Apr 09, 2013
Fuaja Singh completed his last marathon in Hong Kong only a few weeks before he turned 102 years old recently. He said he feels it might be time to retire from running marathons, but he plans to continue...
Will there be a ‘real’ CMS administrator soon? It’s looking so
By
James M. Berklan
Apr 03, 2013
If you’re a gambling person, it looks like the odds just got a whole lot better for Marilyn Tavenner becoming the next administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s...