Open Door Forum on Manual Medical Review Scheduled for October 22
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will hold
a special open door forum (ODF) on October 22, 2:00
pm-3:30 pm ET, to allow providers to ask
questions about the manual medical review of therapy services that exceed
$3,700.
During this special ODF
(conference call only), CMS will discuss therapy documentation requirements and
answer any questions providers may have. CMS requests that providers who order
or provide therapy services nationally participate in the call. The therapy cap
applies to all Part B outpatient therapy settings and providers in:
- private practices
- Part B skilled
nursing facilities
- home health
agencies
hospital
- outpatient departments
rehabilitation
agencies (outpatient rehabilitation facilities)
- comprehensive
outpatient rehabilitation facilities
Participants may submit
questions prior to the special ODF to therapycapreview@cms.hhs.gov.
To
participate, call 866/ 501-5502 and enter conference ID 44803009.
New Adult Fitness Exam Tool Promotes Continuum of PT Care for Adults
APTA's
newest publication, Adult Fitness Examination: A Physical Therapy Approach,
brings together a series of tests and measures that enables physical therapists
to build lifelong health and wellness plans with their asymptomatic adult
clients.
Written
by APTA member Dan Millrood, PT, MEd,
and Charlotte Chua, PT, DPT, this groundbreaking assessment tool contains the
ready-to-use instructions and resources PTs need to identify, quantify, and qualify
key components of physical health and wellness.
For
educators, it's a textbook that addresses educational objectives related toprevention,
health promotion, fitness, and wellness.
Adult Fitness Examination includes:
-
preparticipation
health screening overview
- 16 ready-to-use examinations, complete with step-by-step instructions and full
color photos; normative data, charts, flowcharts, illustrations; and notes and
warnings (when to terminate testing)
- equipment supply checklist
- clinician workbook to promote easy, accurate record-keeping
- client take-home form to help clients follow treatment plans,
track results, and stay motivated to achieve health and fitness goals
Order
Adult Fitness Examination (AFE-001, $34.99 for APTA members) from APTA's online bookstore.
Diabetic Foot Ulcers Linked With Higher All-cause Mortality
Diabetic
foot ulceration (DFU) is associated with a nearly 2-fold increased risk for
all-cause mortality above that of diabetes alone, says a Medscape Medical News article based on a meta-analysis published in Diabetologia.
The
authors included 8 studies in their analysis. The studies were published
between 1996 and 2011 and reported on a total 17,830 patients with 81,116
patient-years of follow-up. Patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes were
included in all but 1 study, in which all patients had type 2 diabetes.
The
3,095 patients with DFU had a significantly longer duration of diabetes (12.72
years) compared with the 14,735 patients without DFU (7.19 years). The
prevalence of coronary artery disease was significantly higher among patients with
DFU (31.4% vs 14.7%), as was that of both hypertension (57.6% vs 35.7%) and
hypercholesterolemia (47.6% vs 11.1%).
During
follow-up, there were a total 3,619 deaths from any cause. The population with
DFU had a 1.89 pooled relative risk for all-cause mortality compared with the
patients with diabetes without DFU. Unadjusted rates of all-cause mortality
were 99.9 per 1,000 person-years for the population with DFU vs 41.6/1,000 in
the group with diabetes only.
Further
analysis of 3,138 patients in 4 studies for whom information on cardiovascular
mortality was available showed that rates of fatal myocardial infarction and
fatal stroke also were higher among patients with DFU. However, the overall
proportion of deaths resulting from cardiovascular causes was almost the same
in the DFU and non-DFU groups—43.6% of the 117 DFU patients and 44.2% of the
952 diabetes-only patients.
The
higher mortality rate in patients with DFU may also "relate to their more
advanced stage of diabetes, with greater overall disease burden and
noncardiovascular complications of foot ulceration such as sepsis," Medscape says.