Did the American Psychological Association give bad advice on Reimbursement?

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).

If you're not using CPT code 90837, check this out!

When the CPT* codes for psychotherapy were revised in 2013, 90837 became available for longer therapy sessions. 90837 had two advantages over the previous code for longer sessions. First, it only required a therapy session of 53 minutes which is in line with how many clinicians practice; and second payers would pay for it.

New Text/Voice Messaging; Fixed: Daily Monitoring Alerts

1. New Text and Voice Messaging You can now send notifications of new messages, new statements, or appointment reminders via email, text, or voice. –Go to the patient chart > Messaging. On the notifications tab you can choose the type of notifications you want to send (email, text, voice) and where to send them. –The notifications for new messages alerts states, “You have a new message in your inbox.” –Statement alerts say, “You have a new account statement in your inbox.” Email alerts have a link to the patient portal log in. –Appointment Reminders state, “You have an appointment with (name of provider) on (date) (time).”

New Developments in Mobile Outcomes

We are evolving our mobile outcomes and monitoring app and we have brought in a research team headed by Bruce Wampold, Ph.D. (author of the Great Psychotherapy Debate) to help us in this ongoing effort. Initially his group will help us develop outcomes metrics (e.g. effect size statistics) and decision support alerts as to adequacy of response to treatment. Longer term we hope to assess the impact of providing daily monitoring on treatment outcomes, a prospect we find pretty exciting.

CarePaths is Hiring!

We are looking for the following: