ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

How would you like to wake up one morning and find out that there are new rules you need to know in order to get your paycheck at the end of the week?  Those of us who work in private practice understand that the rules for reimbursement change and shift constantly, but imagine wading through hundreds of pages in the hopes of trying to find the tidbits that actually apply to what you are supposed to be doing.  Enjoy this link for some light reading: Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule CY 2013 .   These requirements were just recently published and significantly change the coding requirements for Medicare reimbursement.  Again. Other changes that we have this week are more wonderful rules to contend with - this time having to do with complex requirements for what a physician's referral has to say in order for a school district to bill related services under the Medicaid program.  This NYS Medicaid rule set is not as long as the CMS rules but only covers ...

This will be a brief entry to serve as placemarker for a larger discussion, if it ends up being warranted.  I have blogged before about my basic understanding of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis states that there is a power to words and that words frame our perspectives and understandings.  Language is a medium for expression of a culture – and a culture is a shared set of beliefs and practices. In the simplest form, language transmits the beliefs and practices of people. As Bruner has pointed out, words reflect our beliefs that frame our narratives and support our culture. Today I was being interviewed by a media person and they were confused about my use of the word 'intervention'  when I was talking about 'occupational therapy interventions.'  This was surprising to me.  My message to them was focused on the friendly context of my clinic and the services we offer, and their understanding of the word 'intervention' was related to a reality...

This morning my OCC 471 class is taking their final examination as I write this entry.  The class content was focused on occupational therapy assessment in pediatric settings and I am aware that the students are nervous as I sit at the front of the room.  I wish that I had a way to make them feel better. This blog is generally about my practice and not about my teaching - even though there are many logical points of intersection.  The whole point of teaching is to prepare people FOR practice and I know that all these students spent the weekend trying to answer the same question, "How will I know when I know enough??" As I was walking toward the college this morning I watched birds flying around the bell tower of Ball Hall.  My immediate thoughts were related to wondering why birds choose the highest spot on campus to congregate.  I figured that there were probably a few possibilities: the like the view of the lake the perch has geographic proximity to ne...

I like ideas.  I even like big ideas.  That would include big ideas that are created simply for academic purposes.  However, as my bio indicates, I am a pragmatic guy who is sometimes at odds with his transcendent training.  Or something like that. So in other words, I thought I liked ideas.  Maybe sometimes I don't.  I am starting to wonder. The latest barrage of ideas that I got hit with this week has to do with sustainability and its application to occupational therapy.  I have some opinions about this that are probably a logical extension of these ideas that I blogged about in 2009 that relate to developing lexicon related to social or occupational justice constructs.  Please go read that information first if this is a topic that interests you. OK so this week I saw a student spam posting the OT Connections site trying to get people to answer some survey about the role of occupational therapy with sustainability.  I normally just ig...