Paperwork/Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance

[TheOx777]

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How much exposure do current students get to this type of stuff during school and/or clinical rotations? Professionals, how much paperwork or electronic entry are you responsible for on a daily/weekly basis. I imagine that it is contingent upon setting, but I think it's something to be cognizant of as a pre-PT or PT student. It was made very clear to me during my clinical observations that insurance companies want things perfect or reimbursement will not occur. Even when a therapists has done his/her due diligence, there still may be issues with what is reimbursed from certain companies. Thoughts?

 

[DancerFutureDPT]

even before our first day of class we had a homework reading on documentation, and from literally day one they've been drilling it into us. Every time we go to a clinic to shadow we see documentation, sometimes we'll see actual insurance paperwork, etc....but even from day one of class they've been telling us that we need to document in certain ways for insurance purposes (i.e. making sure our skilled treatment can only be performed by a trained/licensed professional because otherwise insurance won't cover it, etc.).

Then later on in our curriculum (akiramay can attest to this since I believe she's had the class) there's a whole section on medical coding, ICD-9 codes, insurance info, etc.

 

[dizzy88]

Documentation is a huge focus in our tests and measures class that we took in our 2nd semester (fall for our program). The instructor for that class teaches us several other courses too and she keeps stressing what we learned in her previous course. She's a real stickler on stuff. We all refer to her as the documentation nazi

I'm not sure what it's like in the clinic when you're on internship because I haven't done my 1st full time one yet. However, in my last part time experience, my CI would look over documentation of the 3rd year intern who was there. Just a brief check and give her feedback if she needed it. You will have your own patient load, so it is your responsibility to do the necessary documentation.

Before PT school, I worked as a receptionist in a private PT clinic. I had a lot of experience with insurance companies and communicated a lot with our billing service. You're right, you've got to be very specific and and choose your wording correctly if you want reimbursement.

I'm going to start my first full time internship in a couple weeks and I think I'm more scared about documentation/billing than I am about patient care haha.

 

[callmecrazy]

How much exposure do current students get to this type of stuff during school and/or clinical rotations? Professionals, how much paperwork or electronic entry are you responsible for on a daily/weekly basis.

We get what I think seems to be a lot in our curriculum. We had a series of 3 courses in "Professional Development and Leadership", which was devoted mostly to regulations and documentation. I've also gotten a lot through clinical placements, where most will expect students to complete daily notes at the very least.

In practice, the amount of documentation involved can vary significantly. In my experience, the least in school-based and the most in SNF. It can also vary dependent on what system the facility uses, where you fall in the hierarchy, etc.

 

[goyo1010]

I think these types of topics in class will be even harder than any other PT class... I've seen some of the PTs in my clinical observations tear their hair out dealing with paperwork, billing, insurance, etc. The state of health care, patient needs, practice ethics all seem to make it near chaos. But I do hope there will be a sufficient amount of exposure with these types of topics concerning PT, as I do believe and is probably the reality (I try to push it in the back of my mind), as horrible as these things are, they are integral to the everyday practice of a physical threrapist, or any health care practitioner for that matter.

Thanks for the responses ya'll. And thumbs up to you TheOx777 for the topic.