American Physical Therapy Association of Delaware
The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would like to remove barriers to telehealth and allow its providers—including physical therapists (PTs)—to conduct telehealth activities across all 50 states and in non-federal sites, including patients’ and providers’ homes.
In a proposed rule, the VA describes how its current telehealth program is limited by many state professional licensure laws and regulations, … Read full post
While the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) considers what to do with a proposed rule that APTA says creates “perverse financial incentives” for reductions in care in home health (HH), APTA and its members can be satisfied that the association, its components, and individual members mounted a strong, multifaceted education and advocacy effort that is likely to … Read full post
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) believe they’ve come up with an exoskeleton with the right combination of features to treat crouch gait in children with cerebral palsy (CP)—the device improves knee extension but does so in a way that allows wearers to use their own muscles.
Developed by the NIH Clinical Center Rehabilitation Medicine Department, the exoskeleton … Read full post
If a rule from the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is adopted as proposed, physical therapists (PTs) and physical therapist assistants (PTAs) who work in home health could find themselves in a very different payment environment as early as 2019. That new environment could include a shift from 60- to 30-day episodes of care, and the startup … Read full post
The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent its spring and summer issuing proposed and final rules on areas ranging from the Medicare physician fee schedule, to what skilled nursing facilities will be paid and what they’ll have to report, to inpatient reimbursement and home health episodes of care.
Here’s a quick guide to where some of these … Read full post
It’s not exactly a do-over, but the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently made more than a few tweaks to a 2017 final rule for long-term care (LTC) facilities—including changes that move compliance deadlines and reinstate unintentionally omitted requirements.
In addition to correcting typos, the document issued by CMS also targets what it calls “technical” errors in … Read full post
The proposed 2018 Medicare physician fee schedule (PFS) released today by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) includes some positive news for physical therapists (PTs)—a proposal to maintain the values of some current procedural terminology (CPT) codes commonly used by PTs, and even increase values for a few.
The proposed rule is a win for the profession … Read full post
