|
|
|
|
|
2008 September 17th: Our Seminar in the Chicago Area has only 3 spaces left, so if you were planning on attending, you had better get your reservation in. The Las Vegas and Cherry Hills seminars are also filling up fast. July 28th: We have relocated the cancelled Atlantic City seminar for October 24th and 25th to the Cherry Hills area. Our new location will be at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center in Cherry Hill, NJ just south of Philadelphia and just over an hours drive into Atlantic City. Visit our SNF Seminar page for more information. SNF Seminars We will be holding the seminar in Florida towards the end of the year, we'll keep you posted. June 6th: All of our locations for our Medicare Made Easy have been been finalized. We have tried to keep the overall costs to our participants as reasonable as we can seeing that everything is going UP! Because of this we have decided to change locations from Atlantic City to the Philadelphia area. As soon as this is finalized it will be posted. We will be posting our locations for Part B "Avoiding Denials Through Understanding of Documentation, Coding and Billing". This course will be expanded to 2 days and will include dealing with denials. Interested in hosting??? We have made some changes to our Medicare Survival Guides. We have taken out the Quality and Content Chart Audit and combined them into one double sided laminated sheet template that can be copied for use. The guides now include the CCI edits; these edits are also available in a single double sided laminated sheet or in a ring binder of two half pages. March 18th: We have finalized our locations for Raleigh, Sacramento and Columbus. Class sizes are limited due to the interactive nature of the workshop so register early to ensure a place. February 13th: We have finally got our 2008 schedule for SNF "Medicare Made Easy 2008". Follow our link to the scheduled sites and dates. Seminars for SNF 2008 If you are interested in hosting this seminar, give us a call, 954-720-4087 and we can discuss the benefits. February 2nd: We are finalizing our 2008 schedule for Medicare Made Easy for SNF. We have our locations, we are just working out dates. Our final list for 2008 includes Columbus, OH; Las Vegas, NV; Sacramento, CA; St Louis, MO; Houston, TX; Raleigh, NC; Atlantic City, NJ and Birmingham, AL. We are in the process of updating our website to make it more user friendly and add a shopping cart for your purchases. We are also looking at expanding our on-line store to include other items than just Medicare related. So keep watching. January 10th: Happy New Year to you all. We are starting the year with a seminar in New Jersey to meet the CEU licensing requirements for PT. Our Medicare Made Easy for Skilled Nursing will be held Jan 25th and 26th in the Burlington/Mt Holly area between Trenton and Philly. Space is limited so register early. Follow this link for further information, NJ Seminar
2007 December 20th: Well that time of the year is here and Encompass is taking a holiday break. The office will be closed from December 22nd until January 7th 2008. During that time, e-mails will be answered but our phone lines will not. All of us at Encompass wish you a happy and safe holiday season and a healthy and prosperous New Year. December 3rd: What a busy and successful month we had in November. So busy that we didn't get any updates out to you; and the e-zine, well!!!! Now we can take a deep breath and look at 2008. You will be seeing a new look to our website as we make it more user friendly. We have been told that we are hard to find so we will work on that big time. For those of you who were unable to attend our seminars, look for them available on DVD by January. We are still working on our 2008 schedule. Any offers for hosting? October 14th: We have finalized a location for our last seminar of 2007 in South Florida. We will be using the premises of the Pompano Beach Power Squadron just off Sample Road and Federal Highway in Pompano Beach. This is the first occasion we have used a non-hotel location but hopefully not our last. For 2008, we are looking for host facilities to present our seminars at. The cost of hotel meeting rooms and hotel rooms has increased dramatically, along with the cost of providing refreshments. In order to maintain our current prices we are requesting your help. If you have meeting room space available and would consider hosting our program, or if you know of any location that we can contact, please let us know. For the use of your premises, we would provide compensation in the form of free attendance for staff members, depending on class size. We would do the advertizing and reservations. If you are interested, please contact us. Some of the locations we are considering are North and South California, Maryland, Missouri, Hawaii and Las Vegas. If you have any other suggestions for a location, please let us know. Remember!! We also can customize any of our seminars to meet your needs. September 25th: We are adding an additional location to our Part B seminar "Avoid Denials Through Understanding of Documentation, Coding and Billing", this will be in Greater Ft Lauderdale area on November 28th and 29th, especially for those Florida PTs and PTAs who leave everything to the last minute. September 17th: In the What's News page, I have mentioned the OIG report on an investigation they have performed on a PT in South Florida for services he had provided in 2003, YES 2003!! In today's Medicare World, it is not a question of IF you are going to experience a Medical Review, it's a question of WHEN. CMS's rapid nationwide expansion of the Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) (whose only role is to investigate "closed files", i.e. those claims that are between one and five years old), we now have the Fiscal Intermediaries and Carriers, the Program Safeguard Contractors, the RACs and the CERT contractor performing Medical Reviews. If you read about the Florida PT and were wondering how the OIG came up with such a large amount of money to be paid back to Medicare, this is how it is calculated. Based on the 100 claims reviewed, the OIG determined that there was an error in the amount paid in 96 of the claims reviewed. Through the use of a standardized calculated methodology, they determined an estimated error in payment of $411,781 based on the total amount of $864,650.64 paid to the therapist during 2003. Although the therapist is contesting the determination and will process the denied claims through the appeals process, the monies still have to be returned to Medicare. So, the moral of the story is "You cannot do much about what has happened in the past, but you can certainly help prevent it in the future". We are thrilled to announce our new "Quick Reference Guide to 53 RUG-III", a laminated pocket guide for nursing is now available. This 22 page guide contains all of the coding requirements for each RUG category as well as an MDS schedule and guide to coding of Section G - ADLs. This coding guide is also available as a single page. Visit our store for more information. At the same time we have minimized our other two survival guides to the same pocket size of 6.5" x 4.5" with a 5mm laminate and top binding. August 7th 2007:I want to address SUPERVISION of PTAs. For some reason, lots of therapists have got it into their head that PTAs need direct supervision. I have addressed this many, many times both in our e-zine and in the Medicare Advisor. The vast majority of sites of services and insurers accept general supervision of PTAs, as do most State Practice Acts. The ONLY and I repeat ONLY site of service that requires direct supervision is Therapists in Private Practice. These are the therapists that have their own Medicare provider number and bill a Medicare Carrier Contractor on a CMS 1500 form. Every other site, including acute hospital (unless excluded by state practice); hospital outpatient; Home Health; SNF (Part A and B); Inpatient rehab facilities; CORF; ORF or Rehab Agencies; CAH; LTCH; and if I've missed anything out other than Private Practice, it includes them as well. OK, I hope I made things clear. We have been working on products for nursing and have developed a Quick Guide to 53 RUGs. It is a laminated flip guide similar to our Medicare Survival Guides, but pocket size. We should have it available through our online store before the end of the month. We are also planning to get our CE provider for Nursing and expand our availability to provide Webcasts covering SNF nursing topics. If you know a nurse, or are a nurse, with SNF knowledge and would like to assist us as an associate with review and input on products and webcasts etc., please contact me. This is not an employee situation, but an "as needed" opportunity. We have been working on our Cruzin' CEUs for next year, but have come up against a bit of a hurdle. If you are interested in either of our 2 Medicare seminars, please sign up on our e-mail list, to be notified when we have some time frames and destinations. You can do that through the E-mail link below.
July 2nd 2007: As we approach Independence Day we, at Encompass, are thinking about our brave men and women in the services that are away from home. We give them our sincere thanks and wish them a safe and speedy return. Also in our thoughts are the rehab professionals who are working with those services men and women who have been injured. For those of you at home, have a wonderful happy and safe 4th filled with family and friends.
|
||
