Welcome to a strange feature of th...

Welcome to a strange feature of the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Journal, provided at the Legislative Committee. The committee welcomes any of the present day information, input or questions, and answers. hurl to the Legislative Chair, Ellen Hillegass: ezhillegass@mindspring.com

Latest from Washington:

On December 8 2003 the President signed the Medicare Prescription physic and Improvement Act into law. The fresh law blocks enforcement of the $1590 Medicare therapy cap, as well as creating a prescription medicine benefit.

The 2004 conversion factor for physical therapy services will be approximately $3734 which is up from $36786 in 2003 APTA has updated its Medicare absolute title [i]or[/i] posession schedule calculator on their web site www.apta.org/govt_ affairs/regulatory/medicare for specific digests used by PTs.

Coding Issues:

CM has listed its relative values associated with the recent CPT code (97755) for assistive technology assessment, which is effective January 2004 The relative value total is 93

Physical therapists ofttimes ask if any provider can bill CPT digests from the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation series of digests The APTA's Reimbursement News provided the replication for this question as follows:

"The Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation digests sometimes known as the "9700 series" of collection of lawss are typically used by PT and OT However, CPT 2003 coding main division states that "It is important to recognize that the listing of a service of process and its code number in a specific section of this volume does not restrict its use to a specific specialty assign places to Any procedure or service in any section of this work may be used to designate the services furnished by any qualified physician or other qualified health care professional."

Therefore, any provider may bill an intervention described in the 97000 series of digests as long as their practice act permits them to perform the service. an third-party payers do have payment policies that restrict certain providers from receiving payment for specific services in the 97000 series.

LMRP Update:

Latest revision (January 2004) in Pulmonary Rehab LMRP for United sway Services (LJGS) fiscal intermediary can be construct on their web site: http://www ugsmedicare.com/LMRP/OPSNFLMRPIndex.aspttO. If you can't earn it this way just walk onto www.ugsmedicare.com and look subordinate to providers, LMR Policies. UGS is the fiscal intermediary for Medicare for Wisconsin, Michigan, California, and Virginia.

Tips forward Documentation:

* Every page of your documentation should include the date and time of service.

* Make infallible your targeted audiences understand your abbreviations and acronyms.

* Make firm progress has been documented in a measurable, objective format, and correlated with function.

* Make fully convinced you document any changes in the patient's condition, and revised goals to throw back those changes.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Coding Usage

Q: I have several patients who have been referr to me who are limited in walking suitable to leg pain and have a diagnosis of Peripheral Vascular Disease. Do I use the CPT collection of laws 93668 (peripheral arterial rehabilitation) to bill for my physical therapy evaluation and treatments?

A: No. Patients with a diagnosis of peripheral arterial or vascular disease that are referr to physical therapy should be billed as all other physical therapy patients, using the PT evaluation collection of laws and then the appropriate CPT digests for the procedures used (therapeutic exercise, gait, etc)

* a great deal of the information in this update has been graciously supplied on the Physical Therapy Reimbursement novels Jan/Feb 2004, published by the APTA.

Copyright Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal Mar 2004

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