Allow your therapists to deliver care, not paper!
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Allow your therapists to deliver care, not paper!
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Requirements of the Minimum Date Set (MDS) when used for Resource Utilization Group (RUG) analysis demands accurate counts of minutes of actual therapy delivered to residents, while dollars capped on Medicare Part B therapy necessitate accurate and timely summaries of therapy delivered to date. Many therapy services delivered must now (or soon) be documented by HCPCS codes and the date of service. All of these changes demand additional details about therapy service delivery. The single case-mix adjusted payment for Medicare Part A demands a highly efficient management of therapy delivery, and of therapists! The same incentive that drives Medicare Part A also comes into play with managed care contracts: Competition to provide quality services at the lowest possible cost. Costs are no longer reimbursed, but facilities must pay for all services provided to their residents. One way to reduce the cost of therapy is to augment supervisors with accurate and easy to use management tools. At the same time, therapists can be made more effective by replacing time-consuming paperwork with point of care tools to document their time and activities. Increased attention to possible fraud and abuse make accurate records a business essential. Paper records are expensive and are not well suited to analysis, and also introduce internal inconsistencies. Transcribing paper into computers just increases the costs, increase the possibilities for errors and delays the availability of information needed for management decisions. Even having therapists enter their time into desktop computers is a distraction from providing care, and consumes time. We at CareTrack believe our Therapy Tracking System is the solution to manage the delivery and documentation of therapy services. The CareTrack Therapy Tracking System is not in the future - it is available now and will continue to work for you in the future. The CareTrack Therapy Tracking System: The function of the CareTrack Therapy Tracking System is to capture therapy time at the point of service, provide accurate billing information and to manage and analyze the activities of providing care to residents in nursing home and ambulatory settings. CareTrack allows organizations to easily track the services that they provide to residents in the nursing home or ambulatory setting on a point of service basis, and if you wish, the Care Track Therapy Tracking System can also track employee's time providing hours for payroll purposes. The information is collected directly into a palmtop sized computer (which we call a "data unit"), completely avoiding paper and transcription. Paper reports can be printed when needed for records or can be customized to your specifications. Data is captured in the smallest elements (events) and can be easily aggregated into any reporting format your organization may desire. Since the data is collected at the time and place of care, it is more accurate, timely, and precise than any paper based system can be. The Health Care Financing Administration used similar methods while conducting the Staff Time Studies used to develop the Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-III). There is no time lag from data collection to computerized availability for reporting. Capability: The reporting capability of CareTrack Therapy Tracking System is virtually unlimited. Given the data entry which is based on patient specific and caregiver specific entry, the data collected can then be utilized to track/monitor a variety of variables in many different views. The system is based on the systems that led to the Skilled Nursing Facility Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-III)
Added Value to Rehabilitation: CareTrack is a solution not just a program. CareTrack, maintains accurate information about care provided to residents, including the CPT or HCPCS codes of the treatments, the time and duration of treatments, including the "actual minutes in therapy" as required by the MDS. Even group treatments are tracked. All staff time can be logged to allow accurate determination of productivity and allow for long distance supervision. Logs cannot be fabricated on the data unit, but computer and paper methods are provided to allow mistakes and lapses to be documented to increase the accuracy of the system.
Are you interested? If you’re interested in learning more about the CareTrack Therapy Tracking System and how we can assist you with our basic system or if we can customize our system for you call us today. HCFA Transmittal AB-00-14 Dated 2/23/2000, Questions and Answers Regarding the Prospective Payment System (PPS) for Outpatient Rehabilitation Services and Physical Medicine Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Coding Guidance, can be viewed at the following web site: http://www.hcfa.gov/pubforms/transmit/AB001460.pdf. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view this document and can be downloaded at no cost by clicking here. Phone: (888) 873-3381 Fax: (904) 406-5190 e-mail: info@caretracksystems.com CareTrack Systems, LLC P.O. 3408 Laurel Leaf Drive, Orange Park, FL 32065 . |
The
Reason for the CareTrack Therapy Tracking System:
Fundamental changes in the way rehabilitation therapy services are delivered
and paid by the federal government
have been mandated by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Far reaching changes
to Medicare Part A and B billing that resulted from this act, and with
additional changes in rules that are anticipated in the next several years,
increased penetration of managed care in many markets, and a general change
in nursing home and therapy payment systems are quickly changing the data
requirements for therapy service billing even in private contracts.
Care
Documentation: Data is collected for two basic categories: Non Resident
Specific Tasks (NRST) and Resident Specific Task (RST). In addition, all
residents can be tracked with services provided. HCPCS/CPT data entry
for all therapy services provided are utilized. The actual date and time
of each service is documented, and the actual minutes of received therapy
are documented. The data entry flow is very easy, and choices at all times
consist of only the appropriate choices for the decision to be made, even
to specific tasks by PT, OT, SLP and restorative Aides. 
Payroll
Purposes: By caregivers entering their services from the minute they
log into starting work for the day and by tracking breaks, meals and service
time a complete record of the day's activity is maintained. Even lapses
in time recording are identified to facilitate completing the entry. Depending
on your payroll system the complete data from the data unit can be extracted
and sent to your payroll system.