The 2013 Slate of Candidates for APTA National Office now is available on the APTA website. It also may be found in the House of Delegates community documents. The Candidate webpage, including candidate statements will be posted on February 8, 2013. Elections for national office will be held at the 2013 House of Delegates on June 24, 2013. Please contact Angela Boyd in APTA's National Governance and Leadership Department for additional information.

Physical therapists are encouraged to attend a conference call hosted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on December 12, 1:30 pm ET, that will cover the new functional reporting requirements for outpatient physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech language pathology services, effective January 1, 2013.

Participants will learn how to report patient functional limitation information on claims using the 42 new nonpayable functional G-codes and 7 new severity/complexity modifiers on claims for physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech language pathology services. These G-codes and modifiers will be required on selected claims for all outpatient therapy services. In addition, the G-codes and severity modifiers used in the functional reporting are required to be documented in the patient's medical record of therapy services. To ensure a smooth transition, CMS sets forth a testing period from January 1, 2013, until July 1, 2013. After July 1, 2013, claims submitted without the appropriate G-codes and modifiers would be returned unpaid.

The call will include an overview of the new functional reporting requirement, including effective dates, and information on:

• professionals and providers affected
• nonpayable G-codes used to report functional limitations
• modifiers used to report the severity of functional limitations
• when reporting is required
• documentation requirements

A question and answer session also will be held.  

The speaker for this call is Pamela R. West, PT, DPT, MPH.

The presentation for the call will be posted at least 1 day in advance of the call on the FFS National Provider Calls webpage. In addition, the link to the slide presentation will be e-mailed to all registrants on the day of the call.

Registration will close at 12:00 pm ET on the day of the call, or when available space has been filled.

Physical therapists practicing in Joint Commission-accredited ambulatory care settings may wish to comment on proposed revisions to the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Ambulatory Care. Comments are due December 10. Visit the Commission's website for instructions on providing input. 

Eighteen APTA members have been selected to share their innovative practice models with their colleagues during the upcoming Innovation Summit 2013:  Collaborative Care Models. These members were nominated by their chapters or sections because of their involvement in innovative care delivery models. The nominations were reviewed and scored by a panel of APTA member experts. 

The innovators will receive funding to attend the Summit where they will interact with policy makers, payers, physical therapists and other health professionals as they explore the role of physical therapists in new models of health care delivery and payment. They will share information about their work with both onsite and virtual audiences. 

The Innovation Summit will be held on March 8, 2013. The Summit program will include panel discussions on the role of physical therapists in accountable care organizations, patient-centered medical homes, bundling initiatives, new private payment models, and employer driven programs. Virtual attendees will attend the programming and interact with panelists and other attendees through an innovative online platform and social media. Registration now is open.

The selected innovator are: Mark Amundson, PT, DSc, DPT, SCS, Private Practice Section; Michael Billings, PT, MS, CEEAA, Oregon Chapter; Andrea Branas, PT, MPT, MSE, CLT, Women’s Health Section and Oncology Section; Allison Daly, PT, DPT, Louisiana Chapter; Michael Eisenhart , PT, New Jersey Chapter;  Jay Irrgang, PT, PhD, ATC, FAPTA, Orthopaedic Section; Rich Larsen, PT, OCS, Wisconsin Chapter; Mike Lebec, PT, PhD, Acute Care Section; Judy Lindsay, PT, Pediatric Section; Thomas Moriarity, PT, OCS, South Carolina Chapter; Kim Nixon-Cave, PT, PhD, PCS, Pennsylvania Chapter;  Peter Rigby, PT,  Washington Chapter; Jennifer Sidelinker, PT, GCS, Geriatric Section; Mary Stilphen, PT, DPT,  Health Policy and Administration Section; Kristine Terrio, PT, MSHS, New Hampshire Chapter; Darin Trees, PT, DPT, CWS, Texas Chapter; Phil Tygiel, PT, MTC, Arizona Chapter; Chris Wilson, SPT, Ohio Chapter.

The introduction of the supine sleep position to reduce the prevalence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has not altered the timing or sequence of infant rolling abilities, say authors of an article published online in Early Human Development. This information is valuable to health care providers involved in the surveillance of infants' development, they add. Original normative age estimates for these 2 motor abilities are still appropriate. 

The aim of this study was to compare the order and age of emergence of rolling prone to supine and supine to prone before the introduction of back to sleep guidelines and 20 years after their introduction. The original normative data for the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) were collected just prior to the introduction of back to sleep guidelines in 1992. Currently these norms are being reevaluated. Data of rolling patterns of infants 36 weeks of age or younger from the original sample (n=1,114) and the contemporary sample (n=351) were evaluated to compare the sequence of appearance of prone to supine and supine to prone rolls (proportion of infants passing each roll) and the ages of emergence (estimated age when 50% of infants passed each roll).

According to the results, the sequence of emergence and estimated age of appearance of both rolling directions were similar between the 2 time periods.

APTA, in conjunction with the Therapy Cap Coalition, is launching a national grassroots campaign to "Stop the Therapy Cap" on Monday, December 3. The patient impact of the cap is the theme of Monday's campaign. Almost 50 associations, organizations and patient groups will be sending action alerts to their members. With about 30 days left until expiration of the therapy cap exceptions process, the goal is to create a significant surge in Congressional e-mails and phone calls urging members of Congress to stop the therapy cap from taking effect in 2013.  

APTA has provided association members form letters and e-mails in its Legislative Action Center. To access the materials, log in to the website, click "Take Action" under "Stop the Medicare Therapy Cap and Prevent SGR Payment Cuts," and follow the instructions. If you have time, personalize the e-mail and let Congress know how the cap impacts your patients.

Congress has been very clear: it will not take action without input from constituents. If you only send 1 advocacy e-mail or make 1 advocacy phone call this year, do it on Monday. 

APTA will send out an Action Alert Monday morning with talking points and instructions for contacting your legislators. Also, ask your patients to e-mail or call their members of Congress on Monday using APTA’sPatient Action Center. For more information on APTA's advocacy efforts, visit the Medicare Therapy Cap website.

Time is running out! Take 5 minutes on Monday and contact your legislators. You can make a difference and help prevent a hard Medicare therapy cap of $1,900 from being implemented in 2013.

Allowing patients to e-mail their clinicians and access their records online is associated with more, not fewer, telephone calls, office visits, and clinical services in general, says a Medscape Medical News article based on a study published in the November 21 issue of JAMA.  

Researchers studied the effect of an online Web portal for patients enrolled in Kaiser Permanente (KP) Colorado. The portal, called My Health Manager (MHM), connects to KP's electronic health record system. MHM allows patients access test results, request medicine refills, schedule nonurgent appointments, and exchange messages with their clinicians on nonurgent health issues.

The authors measured the use of health care services by 44,321 users of MHM before and after KP Colorado adopted the system compared with health care use by an equal number of nonusers. All patients in the study were continuously enrolled in KP Colorado for at least 2 years from March 2005 through June 2010.

Lead author Ted Palen, MD, PhD, MSPH, and coauthors found that the number of office visits by MHM users increased by 0.7 per member per year compared with nonusers. Telephone encounters rose at a smaller rate of 0.3 per member per year. The rates of after-hours clinic visits, emergency department encounters, and hospitalizations per 1,000 members per year rose significantly, by 18.7, 11.2, and 19.9, respectively. These patterns held true whether the patients were younger or older than 50 years, says the article.  

In contrast, a 2007 KP study of this issue in the organization's Northwest region reported that office visits decreased between 7% and 10% for patients using the patient portal. At that time, however, only 6% of KP Northwest patients were signed up for it. Today, roughly 50% of all KP patients, and about 60% of those in Colorado, are logging on.

Online access might have helped patients take more responsibility for their health care, which led them to use more services, Palen told Medscape Medical News. Or perhaps patients who signed up for MHM were already likely to use more services because of clinical characteristics that the study failed to control for. Future research will try to tease out cause and effect, he said.

An even more important question to answer, said Palen, is the effect of the online clinician–patient relationship on clinical outcomes. If virtual visits lead to more face-to-face visits, does a patient's health necessarily improve as a result?