(Long Island, NY) Global Financing is proud to announce the ability to Fund a portion of your PI receivables up front. This will appreciably increase cash flow on those cases without insurance coverage. No risk or obligation to repay if a particular case results in a write off. The Standard program is a $500 advance which you will receive withing days of submitting proper paperwork. Global is repaid when the case settles.

Globbal also provides funding for diagnostic tests such as MRI and CT Scans as well as providing funds for surgery. Help your patients obtain the care they need.

Please call Wensley McKenney at Global Financing at 1-914-752-1111 for further information.

TOP

(Office of the Inspector General) The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General has released a new report dated June 2005 titled Chiropractic Services in the Medicare Program: Payment Vulnerability Analysis.

The 39 page report identified some key issues such as:

• Maintenance Services were the most common noncovered service that Medicare paid for in 2001. Review indicated that 57% of claims paid did not meet Medicare coverage criteria



• Supporting Documentation for supplied services rarely meet all of Medicare Carriers Manual Requirements



• Lack of Medical necessity is directly related to service volume



• Overall, 67% of the Chiropractic services allowed by Medicare did not meet program requirements

• Ensure that chiropractic services comply with Medicare coverage criteria. Given the strong correlation between the number of services a beneficiary receives and the likelihood a service is not medically necessary, CMS should implement a national frequency edit to target high-volume services - which are especially likely to be medically unnecessary - for medical review. Carriers or Program Safeguard Contractors should then obtain and review the records of beneficiaries targeted by the frequency edit in order to identify and collect overpayments.
  
  Many services that would not exceed even a very low frequency threshold were medically unnecessary, undocumented, not spinal manipulation, or miscoded. Therefore, in addition to whatever frequency control is chosen, CMS should require that its carriers or Program Safeguard Contractors conduct routine service-specific reviews of chiropractic services. When conducting reviews of individual providers, it is imperative that reviewers collect the entire records associated with services selected as part of a service-specific review. Several records we reviewed would have appeared legitimate for any one particular day of service; however, that day's documentation was repeated verbatim for the entirety of the patient's treatment.
  
  
• Require that its carriers educate chiropractors on Medicare Carriers Manual requirements for supporting documentation. Many chiropractors seem unaware of the specific documentation requirements outlined in section 2251.2 of the Manual. CMS should address this lack of knowledge by directing its carriers to issue provider bulletins reminding chiropractors of their responsibilities. Due to the relationship we found between the lack of treatment plans and medically unnecessary services, the bulletins should especially emphasize this requirement.

(ChiroWire) In response to the recent Medicare report, it is clear that one of the main problems encountered is the lack of clinical documentation to properly support supplied services. www.ChiroCredit.com is proud to announce a two hour Online clinical documentation course that includes a manual and forms to ensure proper documentation.

Here are the educational objectives for the course

• THIS COURSE INCLUDES A 46 PAGE DOCUMENTATION MANUAL AND 22 OFFICE FORMS
• Develop the skills for medical documentation record keeping for proper patient care and adherence to insurance protocols
• Summarize informed consent, Mercy guidelines, Medicare guidelines and NCQA guidelines
• Identify common treatment procedures and modalities used in a chiropractic practice And recognize contraindications to them
• designate specific items to consider when interpreting and/or taking plain film X-rays
• Summarize the value of laboratory and diagnostic testing.
• Recognize the importance of patient communication skills in order to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of patients
• Modify procedures and forms to prevent the possibility of a legal malpractice action against the doctor