On Oct. 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will be updating the Minimum Data Set with another round of changes. Most are minor but there will be two changes to the therapy section. Your case-mix...
50 shades of G-coding
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jul 02, 2013
Sorry, ladies, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up with that title. But does anyone else feel like there is a lot of ambiguity to the new G-Coding system? Well, it’s a little too early to tell...
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...
The three C’s are the key!
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Mar 26, 2013
How do you justify the reason for rehab, length of stay and intensity of treatment? You turn to the 3 C’s.
Beware of hospital observation loopholes
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Dec 07, 2012
Hospitals have been undergoing more and more restrictions on re-admissions and are now facing financial penalties in some situations. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in more patients not being classified...
Medicare reviewers often stop short
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jul 23, 2012
If a patient can achieve his or her highest level of independence, as a rehab clinician, I say let’s go for it. To Medicare reviewers, too often they say stop at the prior level of function. So I...
Big challenges ahead for therapy
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jun 12, 2012
A few years ago, my consulting company had the opportunity to work with a facility to implement a bariatric unit within a skilled nursing facility. This would seem an easy task, but the facility ended...
Are you setting yourself up for success?
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Mar 26, 2012
Are you properly capturing set-up time? What on Earth am I talking about? I’m talking about utilizing the regulation as outlined in the Resident Assessment Instrument, version MDS 3.0.
Point-of-service: Friend or foe?
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Feb 22, 2012
As a manager, I used to love to promote point-of-service, or POS. As a therapist, I used to despise POS. How could I have such a love-hate relationship with POS?