Is it worth it? I’m referring to home visits by the therapy team, the patient, and their family. These are the clinical visits with the patient to their home for a “practice run” conducted...
Short-term rehab pros and cons
Sep 11, 2012
These types of short-term rehab patients usually produce the highest reimbursement rates. However, if you’re a facility that struggles with admissions and census, be aware that the length of stay...
New career path?
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Dec 03, 2013
How many of you will agree with me that we never fully turn off the internal therapist mode when we’re in public, outside of work hours?
Are you prepared? 5 questions you need to know the answers to
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Aug 27, 2013
With all the recent regulatory changes that have come down the line, or are about to, we developed a simple five-question survey that each provider had to ask every therapy employee. If you can develop...
Dehydration: Therapy should help fight it
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jul 15, 2014
The elderly are very vulnerable to dehydration and more than just the nursing staff have to be concerned about it. Not keeping an eye on appropriate hydration can cause a variety of serious problems.
Are standardized assessment tools our future?
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
May 20, 2014
With therapy documentation being put under the microscope more than ever, you would be wise to make sure standardized assessment tools are at your fingertips. Unbiased views of data and outcomes information...
Top 5 ICD-10 changes for 2014
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jan 30, 2014
Have you started your countdown clocks yet? It looks like it’s definitely happening this year on Oct. 1, 2014. The transitions from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding will 100% absolutely take effect for the...
No more Rehab Medium RUG defaults
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Oct 08, 2013
Well, Oct. 1 has passed, and we’re all still hanging in. The biggest changes we saw to rehab were the addition of reporting co-treatment minutes on our billing logs and Section O on the MDS. And,...
You’re probably guilty of too much documentation
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jun 18, 2013
Is it time for a diet? Not a food diet, but a documentation diet. I’ve written previous blogs about documentation quick tips, top 10 reasons for denials, and so on. But, how many of you are guilty...
OIG? OMG! One lump problem
By
Shelly Mesure, MS, OTR/L
Jan 23, 2013
The Office of the Inspector General’s recent report about what it calls $1.5 billion in inappropriate Medicare payments to skilled nursing facilities should be yet another wake-up call to providers.