Dr. R. A. Foxworth, FICC, MCS-P
Like most chiropractors, I love going to state association conventions and seminars to learn new things, catch up with old friends, and make valuable connections. You at the state association level know better than anybody that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that there’s no better place to experience that uplifting feeling than at a gathering of colleagues and peers.
So I grow concerned when, amongst the warm greetings, the great aha moments, and the delight of meeting likeminded people, I hear weariness. I hear frustration. I hear confusion.
We’re all busy people who pack our days full, but that’s not the kind of exhaustion I’m hearing. I’m hearing doctors and their team members who feel buried under “paperwork,” electronic or otherwise. I’m hearing front desk staff feeling that they run from fire to fire without ever getting control of their schedules or taking time to breathe. I’m hearing chiropractic professionals pushed to the edge of their bandwidth by overwhelming and constantly changing regulations, by increased third-party payer scrutiny, and by the growing recognition that something is very wrong with our profession’s documentation. On top of all this, there’s the transition to ICD-10.
It just about breaks my heart, because chiropractors, maybe more so than most professionals, choose their careers with joy. They want to be healers. They want to be impact peoples’ lives. They want to give back and to help.
These days, they themselves need help; now more than ever.
Seems like hardly a week goes by without my reading or hearing about some doctor somewhere who has landed him or herself in hot water. It started with a record request. Then maybe it stepped up to a few more requests. And before you know it, that poor doctor is knee-deep in an audit and facing door-closing levels of recoupments.
I know you know this, because you hear about these doctors too. For a few years, we were all able to comfort ourselves with the idea that it was just a few poor outliers who weren’t paying attention. I think reviews and audits are common enough now that we can safely say that this isn’t the exception anymore. It’s becoming the rule. It’s no longer a question of if your state association members get audited. It’s a matter of when.
Your members need help on many fronts. And one of the best places to start is with the basics of compliance, so they’re not vulnerable to charges of dual fee schedules, illegal discounts, or inducements. That’s why I created ChiroHealthUSA . We’re a Network that works in conjunction with a Discount Medical Plan Organization (DMPO) to give chiropractors the means to offer safe, legal discounts to financially challenged patients based on their practice’s actual fee schedule. That means your members don’t have to worry about dual fee schedules, inducements, and the resulting risk of being audited that comes with them. We also provide access to our colleagues who are experts at documentation, reimbursement, compliance, coding, patient finances, and billing and collections.
There is no cost to the doctors who join ChiroHealthUSA and patients pay an affordable $49 fee per patient family per year, easily recovered in the first patient visit. We offer a free on-demand webinar that explains the benefits of becoming a ChiroHealthUSA provider as well as how to easily offer membership to patients. Invite your members to register for one of our webinars.
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Why is the Discount Challenge prize amount $15,024? Because that is the average “per-occurrence” fine for Medicare inducements. That’s not $15,024 per patient, that’s not per provider, that’s PER VISIT. Stinks, doesn’t it? To us, the prize amount is worth the investment if we can help our profession better understand proper discounting.