"Physical therapy is not a subspecialty of the medical profession and physical therapists are not medical doctors; we are a separate profession that provides a unique service that physicians are unable and untrained to provide."

Letter to the AMA from the APTA, Dec 2009

Friday, June 20, 2008

Medical Fraud a Growing Problem - washingtonpost.com

To anyone who follow physical therapy compliance and Medicare anti-fraud activity the case of Rita Campos Ramirez is nothing new.

The media sound bites indicate that Ms. Ramirez was able to bill her charges with just a laptop computer and that she had no more than a high school education.

The Washington Post article emphasizes the simplicity and the size of the problem.

Ms. Ramirez charged 140,000 Medicare claims for HIV drug therapy.

The article states that most of the south Florida Medicare fraud focuses on the following:

"...schemes center on expensive, infusion-based HIV medications and on equipment such as wheelchairs, walkers, canes and hospital beds."


The problem is that honest, hard-working physical therapists get lumped in with the evil-doers.

"Officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees federally funded health programs, say they have stepped up their efforts to combat fraud over the past year by working closely with investigators, removing the requisite billing numbers of nearly 900 companies and imposing new standards in high-fraud areas..."


What physical therapists really need is a simple way to comply with current regulations, not more regulations.

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Tim Richardson, PT owns a private practice at Medical Arts Rehabilitation, Inc in Palmetto, Florida. The clinic website is at MedicalArtsRehab.com.

Bulletproof Expert Systems: Clinical Decision Support for Physical Therapists in the Outpatient Setting is a manager's workbook with stories, checklists, charts, graphs, tables, and templates describing how you can use paper-based or computerized tools to improve your clinic's Medicare compliance, process adherence and patient outcomes.

Tim has implemented a computerized Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system in his clinic since 2006 that serves as a Reminder, Alerting, Prompting and Predicting CDS using evidence-based tests and measures.

Tim can be reached at
TimRichPT@BulletproofPT.com .

"Make Decisions like Doctors"


Copyright 2007-2010 by Tim Richardson, PT.
No reproduction without authorization.

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Consistent with the American Physical Therapy Association Vision Statement for Physical Therapy 2020, the American Physical Therapy Association supports exclusive physical therapist ownership and operation of physical therapy services.