Navigating the Insurance Maze: The Therapist's Complete Guide to Working With Insurance - And Whether You Should 

National Association for Continuing Education (NACE)

Whether you are a therapist who already works with a few insurance companies or you have just considered it -- you may find this the most practical continuing education course you have ever taken. In an easy-to-follow and entertaining format, it answers all your questions about working with employee assistance, managed care, and traditional insurance plans. You'll learn about your participation choices, how to become a preferred provider, and how to get reimbursement without joining a provider network. You'll understand how to get more sessions approved, tips to getting paid (fast, and every time), how to appeal claim denials, as well as how to handle confidentiality concerns and avoid fraud.

Primary care providers are frequently called upon to be team physicians. As a result you must be prepared to deal with both Musculoskeletal and Medical Emergencies. Many of these may find their way into your office, emergency room or urgent care center. This course is designed to provide practice with the hands on skills necessary to have both competence and confidence in their ability to serve the community on the sideline, on the mats, or courtside and in your patient care setting. The course is an expanded version of the SMART (Sideline Management Assessment Response Techniques) Workshop which has been used across the country to provide an opportunity to use these techniques in a supervised setting before they are needed in a life or limb threatening situation. Registrants will have extensive, supervised practice time with uniformed athletes regarding evaluation and management of the athlete with a cervical spine injury including rehearsing all the techniques used to immobilize the athlete. The different exam techniques utilized to examine the football player still in uniform are also performed for all of the joints. Emergency care of fractures is covered with hands on practice time to apply all applicable splints as well as casts used in follow up. In addition, all registrants will practice how to reduce dislocated joints and properly immobilize them and send on for definitive care. Medical emergencies such as Sudden Cardiac Death will be covered using an interactive format that will provide the opportunity to practice using AED's. Registrants will practice techniques to determine fitness to return to play. They will also utilize the evidence contained within an extensively referenced syllabus to better understand how to implement the guidelines within including the new approach to evaluation of Head Injuries and Conussions. Even if you do not plan on covering events patients who have had many of these problems will need you to provide their follow up care and this course will help prepare you to do that with great skill. www.npinstitute.com or 800-462-2492

Primary care physicians confront issues regarding pain in almost 80% of office visits. Pain has been described as ''timeless, ineluctable, and disconcertingly indefinable.'' The expression may be influenced by psychosocial, cultural, and other factors. It is one of the ''thorniest problems'' a physician can face. Should you refill the percocet which the patient has been taking? Prescribing opioids has been described as ''the most dangerous thing a physician can do.'' Is the chronic neck pain your patient has a result of the car accident, due to pre-existing problems, or simply an attempt to extort money from the insurance company? Are the bulging discs on the MRI scan an objective marker of the patient's pain or are they just a normal part of aging? How do you measure pain objectively? Unlike ER work where a serum troponin has 99% sensitivity and 99% specificity, the assessment of pain is based on tests with limited sensitivity and specificity. The so called 5th vital sign is not a sign but a symptom. One physician may opine that a patient has nothing wrong with them and is fit to return to work immediately. This course will discuss how pain is diagnosed and managed. The participant will be provided all the forms necessary to run a pain practice and learn how to write quality reports. Extensive materials including addition lectures on DVD will be provided to the paticipants. www.npinstitute.com or 800-462-2492

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is one of the major health care problems of our time and still goes undiagnosed and unrecognized. According to the National Institutes of Health, over 20 million people have OSA and it is associated with cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension, heart disease and stroke. Yet the current network of sleep specialists can only care for 10% of the affected population. A recent editorial in Chest called for apnea screening on every patient with hypertension. The field is changing rapidly in all respects including diagnosis, treatment and screening technology. The primary care physician must become knowledgeable of all aspects of this disease. This symposium is designed for the primary care physician who wishes to expand the practice to incorporate the evaluation, diagnosis and management of obstructive sleep apnea. It will review the advantages of ambulatory diagnostic technologies as they relate to the differential diagnosis of sleep disorders in general and sleep apnea specifically, the treatment options for management of sleep apnea, and protocols for referral to sleep specialists when appropriate. The CME medical conference will combine expert lectures, oral presentations, and hands-on demonstrations to provide familiarity with FDA approved technologies for ambulatory sleep diagnosis, as well as billing and reimbursement issues in the primary care practice. The CME medical conference is designed for the primary care physicians who want to offer their patients options after the overnight in-lab sleep studies. This CME medical conference presents the essentials that the physician requires to begin a sleep apnea practice safely and successfully. www.npinstitute.com or 800-462-2492