"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

Thursday, December 11, 2008

How much do RACs cost private practice physicians and physical therapists?

I've been living under the gun for three and a half years.

The RAC gun.

The Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program is a new permanent federal program expected to 'go live' in February 2009.

The initial roll-out is mainly in the northeast and in the RAC demonstration states.

I live in Florida, a demonstration state since 2005.

Recent conversations I've had with my peers and professional organizations indicate that there is a lot of additional anxiety regarding the RACs.

While I never want to downplay the severity or the possibility of a Medicare audit, MAC or RAC, I want to present some information that can help private practice physical therapists assess the risk of and the damage from the RACs.

RECOVERED AMOUNTNUMBER OF PROVIDERSTOTAL PHYSICIANS AUDITED BY RACS: 2005-2008
My experience: 2005-2008~$807  
Average Florida Provider: 2006$13521,927 
Average California Provider: 2006$21650,054


Data for this table is available in this report.

Note that physical therapists are lumped in with physicians in the RAC report from which this data is drawn.

$992.7 million dollars in overpayments were recovered from providers, mainly (85%) inpatient hospitals.

Of the $992.7 million only $19 million came from physician practices (which include physical therapists).

40% ($391.3 million) of the overpayments were for medically unnecessary services.

Services are medically unnecessary when the clinician failed to justify why the services were performed.

For physical therapists this usually means measurements of ROM or strength deficits.

Also, measurements of activity limitations.

Finally, link deficits to activity limitations in the physical therapists' diagnosis.

Bulletproof Compliance

Your current Medicare compliance plan should be sufficient to respond to a RAC audit.

If you have a current Medicare compliance plan.

Mine used to be a dusty manila file folder sitting up on a shelf.

Not anymore.

I got busy and got some basic education - available in this blog and at Bulletproof PT.

Get your own compliance program.

Get Bulletproof.

I live under the gun...

But, I sleep well.

Free Tutorial

Get free stuff at BulletproofPT.com

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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