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At least once each week a patient asks me to recommend an item for home use – something that helps with their home exercises, provides more convenience, or something that they may just want to have.

Up until now, I’ve been stuck with either selling the item in my own clinic – eating up my time with ordering, storage, loss tracking, etc – or I’ve printed a screen shot or webpage of a product, only to find out later that the patient ordered the wrong thing. Ugh!

[Read more…] about Home Product Page!

The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) has released it’s statement regarding the transition from Cigna to American Specialty Health physical therapy contracts:

APTA sent a comment letter to CIGNA summarize concerns regarding the Cigna National Physical Medicine Clinical program’s use of American Specialty Health (ASH). Here are some of the points APTA shared with Cigna:

• ASH has limited physical therapy experience and it does not have the requisite expertise to render appropriate clinical decisions regarding medically necessary physical therapy services.
• The ASH Provider Agreement (Agreement) is overly complex, difficult to follow, and will not be readily understood by most therapy providers.
• The Agreement’s payment methodology imposes a burdensome and one-sided appeals process.
• The ASH provider tiering mechanism as described in the Clinical Performance System is unduly complex and arbitrary, and it is not keyed to clinical outcomes.
• The Agreement’s administrative features are burdensome, including the MNR process and the obligation to check the Medicare exclusion list monthly.
• Utilization management under the Agreement calls for non-PTs to review appeals of adverse decisions, and it is not truly evidence-based, since it relies on Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) selected by ASH via a process that does not meet APTA standards.