CarePaths Blog
Online behavioral blog is about weekly updates
EHR software management system. Take control of
your practice and know more about your patients
with a Behavioral EHR & Practice Management
System.
Online behavioral blog is about weekly updates
EHR software management system. Take control of
your practice and know more about your patients
with a Behavioral EHR & Practice Management
System.
It has been an exciting year, so far, here at CarePaths. We hope you have had a chance to try out some of our new features. More are coming next month. Most of these features were suggested by our users and are designed to enhance clinical practice, help you run your office more efficiently and grow your practice. This growth was facilitated by new staff and research collaborators.
We are also working on making our back end technology more robust—which is why you did not see any disruption as we weathered Hurricane Irma.
New faces at CarePaths are strengthening our management, IT and research efforts. Julia Cai, our new chief operating officer, has a master’s in computer science from the University of Birmingham (UK), and a MBA from Duke University. She has held senior management positions at a number of companies, including GlaxoSmithKline. She has also received two awards for entrepreneurial leadership. IT staff additions include Tom Bryan who comes from Cisco Systems where he has led the technical architecture team. And, we are excited that Bruce Wampold PHD and Simon Goldberg PHD are collaborating with us on a research project to improve psychotherapy outcomes.
Clinicians are increasingly using CPT code 90837 (which requires sessions of at least 53 minutes) in place of the 90834 (for sessions of less than 53 minutes). 90837 pays significantly better than 90834. Our data show that denial rates for this code are very low, but higher than for 90834 (see our prior post for data).
We have been told that BCBS of Massachusetts will not reimburse for 90837. It is reported (but not confirmed) that BCBS insurers of Pennsylvania and Utah do not reimburse differentially for this code.
It is also reported that some clinicians around the country have been receiving letters from insurance companies such as Anthem, Highmark and Medical Mutual of Ohio that indicate that their practice patterns are being scrutinized.
The tenor of some of these letters would seem to be an attempt to limit providers use of 90837. We are aware of one letter to a clinician from the mental health vendor for Mutual of Ohio that stated that the percentage of 90837 codes reported by that psychologist was greater than the expected billing distribution as determined by the average billing within the specialty of psychology.
In a recent webinar the president of the American Psychological Association, Tony Puente, Ph.D., warned psychologists about routinely using codes with higher reimbursement rates such as 90837. He stated that “the standard psychotherapy procedure historically and now is the 45-minute intervention,” and “there must be documentation that emphasizes the unusual nature of the procedure, such as difficulty in communicating with the patient or the distance the patient must travel to the therapy office.”
This is bad advice. The 45 minute session is not now, nor ever has been, a standard. Nor is there any evidence that says that 45 minutes is more appropriate than 48 minutes or 53 minutes. Clinicians who routinely use 90837 for longer sessions are perfectly justified in doing so, and do not have to provide documentation of the “unusual nature of the procedure,” unless required to do so by the insurance company.
"I have been in practice full or part time as a Psychologist for over 28 years. The CarePaths system is the most efficient system of record keeping, patient and practice management, authorization tracking, claims management, and billing that I have ever used. With the addition of features recently added to the system, my office will be nearly paperless. As I anticipate retiring in several years, the problem of record repository will not be a significant issue. The customer service at CarePaths is exceptional. Any processing difficulty is usually solved within a day. This system is head and shoulders an improvement over the two forms of proprietary practice management systems I used in the past."
~Patrick Quigley, PhD, LSAC
“I have used many systems and yours is a hidden gem! I really love the functionality, features, and layout!”
~Melissa D. Michel, MSCP, NCC, LPC
“The referral portal is a huge benefit. The Cleveland Clinic uses it to schedule next day appointments for us from the emergency department. It's worked wonderfully.”
~Cara Daily , Ph.D.
"I am a very satisfied user… and I would like to express my strong satisfaction with your product."
~Loren Andrews, LCSW
