A growing therapy practice is something to celebrate! However, every clinic, at some point in its growth, encounters aches and pains that can hinder further or even current success. Here are some process improvements you can make to mitigate growing pains -even as your patient list grows.

Implement Smart Scheduling and Waitlists

The foundation of any successful clinic is scheduling that runs like a well-oiled machine. Your scheduling software should make this as easy as possible for your office staff. That means more than keeping provider calendars at their fingertips, it means being able to categorize appointment types and using tools that automatically find open appointment slots.

Smarter scheduling also includes implementing a waitlist that’s integrated into your scheduling tools, so you’re not missing out on revenue from patients who you don’t have the capacity to see now.

Don’t Skimp on Documentation

Open Your (Metaphorical) Doors

Regardless of what the future holds for COVID, telehealth has become an expectation for many patients and their caretakers. And who can blame them? With busy schedules to accommodate, possible mobility issues, lack of transportation, anxiety, or even rising gas prices, there are tons of reasons that get in the way of making in-office appointments. And we all know how detrimental missed appointments can be for outcomes and retention. So, take advantage of telehealth. By offering a secure and convenient treatment option, you can see more patients than ever before.

Get a Handle on Billing

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One of the worst parts of documentation is typing the same things over and over again. Whether it’s an assessment, a narrative, or something else, none of us want to waste time typing up something we’ve already typed a hundred times before. 

Quick Phrases are an extremely powerful time-saving tool that allows you to enter phrases or paragraphs of your most commonly used narratives, with only two simple keyboard strokes.  They are quickly becoming a standard for hundreds of therapists throughout the country. 

Fusion offers many innovative tools that allow therapists to save time spent on documentation, yet retain the same amount of detail and customization that pediatric therapy requires.  Quick Phrases is just one of them.

With quick phrases, therapists can create a shortcut to automatically insert their most commonly used phrases, acronyms, assessments, patient education, etc (with no character limitation!) 

Fusion already has a ton of pediatric content built in, ranging from flexible Standardized Tests summaries and scoring tables to discipline-specific goal banks, and this tool allows therapists to customize their accounts even further. 

Our therapists love them! In a recent documentation survey several therapists commented on the benefits of Quick Phrases in an open feedback section. One therapist said “quick phrases help complete a note in 5 minutes or less.”

All you have to do is select any free text field in Fusion, type a period ‘.’ followed by a quick phrase code. The quick phrase(s) that have that code will appear in orange at the bottom of the text box.

Then you just click the orange bar at the bottom of the text box that has the quick phrase you would like to use. That will populate that text into the text box! Then text you can edit the text as needed.

Unlike the built-in content, goal bank, and activities, Quick Prases do not come pre-loaded when you set up your Fusion account.  This is done on purpose, to allow you to individually customize each phrase and organize them in whichever way that is beneficial for your unique practice.

And don’t worry! They’re easy to make.

Here are some sample quick phrases for Patient History/Background, Parent Education, Subjective statements, as well as Informal Screening and Test Analyses examples for each discipline to give you an idea of how Quick Phrases are being used in other clinics. 

As a pediatric speech therapist, you know that defensible documentation (i.e., clear and detailed notes) is an essential part of demonstrating your skilled service and getting paid.

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Tired of taking your documentation home with you? Maybe it’s time to give point-of-care documentation a try.

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Note: This post is written from an SLP point-of-view, but it’ll work for OTs and PTs too!

Prior authorizations have rapidly become the norm. That means that if you can’t show a need for skilled services, the insurer won’t pay for treatment.

Even the most Type A of pediatric SLPs don’t get excited about tedious paperwork. We go into speech therapy because we want to help our kiddos, not so that we can spend hours on documentation!

But good documentation is important if you want payers to approve treatment and pay claims. The less you have to go back and forth with payers, the more time you’ll have for more important things.

In a webinar she did for ASHA, Shannon Butkus, MS, CCC-SLP laid out three easy-to-follow rules that will help you demonstrate the medical necessity of treatment.

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We live in a world that is increasingly going digital. Despite this, many pediatric therapists and clinic managers are still doing their work primarily on paper. Why is this?

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Last Updated 7/3/18

If you work as a pediatric OT, you know that documentation is not only the key to getting paid, it is also a representation of therapy’s distinct value to a child.  Whether you’re still using a pen & paper or you use therapy software for your therapy documentation, completing and managing SOAP notes and evaluations for every patient can be overwhelming and sometimes costly–especially if you have a full case load. (more…)