The following short article is from the Dementia Care Australia newsletter. Dementia Care Australia is an independent information and education organization specializing in supporting both people with dementia and their care givers; be they family members, professionals, employers or friends. For more information about Dementia Care Australia, check out their webpage at http://www.dementiacareaustralia.com  Recalling Someone [...] Read More...

I’m sure that many of you heard that the US Congress and the President passed in to law the “Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011”. This legislation received a lot of news coverage because it provides for a 2 month extension of the reduced payroll and unemployment insurance programs. This Law is also important [...] Read More...

An administrator of a facility that Key provides therapy for recently shared this article with the therapy staff at the facility.  The article was written by Wendy Lustbader, M.S.W., who is the author of Counting on Kindness; The Dilemmas of Dependency, and coauthor of Taking Care of Aging Family Members, both published by Free Press.  [...] Read More...

Well the holidays are once again upon us! Let me be the first to wish you Happy Holidays, unless of course you are a therapist working in long-term care. Holidays became much more complicated for us this year due to the changes instituted by CMS in the MDS PPS process. Now we’ve got CMS, PPS, [...] Read More...

Due to the CMS changes that were effective October 1, 2011, the RAI manual (Resident Assessment Instrument) has been revised to reflect the changes.  The MDS changes included a revision on using co-treatment as a treatment approach.  Below are the definitions of co-treatment differentiated by payer source.  The changes are listed in the RAI manual [...] Read More...

The end of the year is quickly approaching, leaving Congress little time to address Medicare therapy caps by extending the current therapy cap exceptions process. It is imperative for all therapists to contact their members of Congress and let them know the detrimental impact of the therapy caps on Medicare beneficiaries. U.S. Representatives Jim Gerlach [...] Read More...

Last week Tracy Cavanaugh and I were in Washington D.C. representing Key Rehab at the 5oth Annual Conference and Exhibition of “Leading Age” (formerly American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging). “Leading Age” serves and advocates for over 5400 not-for-profit providers of healthcare and services for the aging.  Key was one of over [...] Read More...

As therapists in long term care, we are constantly faced with changes in regulations, guidelines and reimbursement.  It is easy to get frustrated with what seem to be unrealistic expectations from those who regulate our industry.  Unfortunately, it is easy to lose sight of why we all became therapists….to help people!  Let’s refocus and remember [...] Read More...

As I mentioned at the end of my last blog there is a significant change that went into effect on October 1st that has to do with the allowable days for regularly scheduled SNF PPS MDS assessments.  The change is this… CMS has reduced the number of days available for setting the ARD of regularly [...] Read More...

Well CMS is really tightening things up these days!  The new rules that they’ve put into place as of October 1 make it more imperative than ever that therapy managers have an accurate assessment of each patient’s needs, that therapist/patient schedules are set accordingly and that communication with nursing, and especially with the MDS coordinator, [...] Read More...