Speech Therapy, EMRs & Therapy Software, Administration Archives

Short-Term Effects of Speech Therapy

Improved Literacy -Whether creating a plan for a patient with aphasia, apraxia, or anything in between, it’s important to understand the link between reading and writing. Speech therapy considers the cognitive and mechanical strengths someone needs to be able to gather ideas, interpret them, and then share their own out with the world -both orally and on the page. This is especially important in pre-school and school-age children who are in the midst of their most formative years. Speech therapists can also recommend adaptive devices to help further bridge gaps.

Greater Self-Esteem -When we’re struggling against our own bodies, our self-esteem and self-efficacy plummet. Our patients are likely to experience hopelessness and other feelings of self-doubt. However, improvements thanks to speech intervention, even small ones, can help reignite hope for patients, inspiring them to keep pushing forward and proving they are capable of more than they realize.

Stronger Communication -Humans are reliant on one another for more than may seem immediately obvious. Whether ordering coffee at a drive-through, trying to understand the care your doctor is prescribing, attending class at a university, or telling someone dear how much they mean to you, clear and strong communication is absolutely essential for a successful life. And, with speech therapy, it’s more attainable than it would otherwise be to so many who are struggling.

Social Belonging -As much as we wish it weren’t so, society is not kind to those who are different. Articulation disorders leave someone prone to bullying from their classmates, a lower perceived intelligence as adults, and even blatant disregard into old age. By improving articulation and bringing clarity to someone’s speech, we are able to protect them from these unjust stigmas and help them feel like they belong.

Long-Term Effect of Speech Therapy

More Independence -As mentioned earlier, we rely on each other for so much, however, when we have a clear, strong voice, we can also maintain more independence, relying less on caretakers and being better able to express our wants and needs. This can help us live fuller, healthier lives, while simultaneously reducing caretaker burnout.
Improved Physical Health -Those living with speech disorders or who may be recovering from debilitating medical instances such as a stroke may have trouble mastering their motor skills. This includes swallowing and breathing, and we don’t need to tell you how critical these are for everyday life. With speech therapy interventions, patients can become less likely to choke and can quite literally breathe easier. Furthermore, the more capable an individual is of speaking, the more they can advocate for themselves and speak up when it comes to their medical care.
Decreased Anxiety -When living with a speech disorder or impairment of any kind, the world suddenly presents far more obstacles and opportunities for things to go wrong. Over time, a state of anxiety can shroud one’s perception of the world. Besides the emotional effects, prolonged anxiety can also contribute to other health factors. But with a vocal quality that can make it over life’s hurdles, we are able to circumvent many of these issues.
Stronger Understanding -The benefits of speech therapy go way beyond the in-the-moment comprehension of words, sounds, and ideas. But interventions can, in the long-term, help patients understand larger-scale concepts and ideas that may have been unattainable to them before.

Solutions that Help You Make a Difference

The work speech and language pathologists are doing may not seem all that eventful and often goes unsung, however, it is speech therapists who are making significant improvements in their patients’ lives every day. Fusion, which is now equipped for adult treatments, is here to help you continue to do the work you do. Designed by SLPs for SLPs, this intuitive EHR is full of features to streamline your workflows and note-taking, so you can get back to care-taking. Schedule a demo today.

What Does the Waitlist Do?

Say goodbye to scattered post-it notes and cumbersome excel spreadsheets. The Waitlist functionality is fully integrated within Fusion, which helps eliminate redundancies and simplifies scheduling. With this function, you can:

Add a new or existing patient to the waitlist with options to track:

Desired location

Therapist

Service needed

Days of the week in which they’re available

Times they’re available

How long they’ve been waiting

View the waitlist with the following available actions

Complete a Find Openings search to schedule an appointment

View the patient’s contact information

Add a note to the waitlist entry

Delete the waitlist item

Remove the waitlist entry when the patient is scheduled

How Does That Help You?

Instead of leaving patients in post-it notes and scattered spreadsheets, you can enter patients, update their information and find them without leaving the waitlist, as well as find available appointments more easily thanks to scheduling integration. Patients are prioritized based on waiting time.

Find out how Fusion can help your practice. Schedule a demo today!

There is no time like the present. Or at least goes the old saying. If you’re embarking on a new journey in your career and thinking of starting your own practice, we can’t be more thrilled for you. We also understand, however, that this new endeavor can be frightening since therapy clinics are nothing like the average business. Let’s walk through a few high-priority items to iron out before starting your own therapy practice.

1. Understand Your Niche

As you know, patients receive physical therapy for endless reasons and the interventions can be just as diverse. Though it’s tempting to serve as an “every man”, (and certainly if you’re just starting out, you can’t exactly turn away revenue), finding your niche can help you stand out and really deliver great outcomes. Is sports therapy your forte? Will you treat primarily children or geriatric patients? Perhaps spinal care is where you feel most at home.

Knowing where your talents lie can help you better direct your treasures. That means purchasing the right equipment, marketing appropriately, developing strong professional relationships, and mastering insurance billing. It can also help you stand out in your local market and meet an otherwise unfulfilled need for the community.

2. Find the Right Software Stack

No practice can operate efficiently (and in some cases, legally) without an EHR (electronic health record). And, on the other hand, the wrong EHR can slow down your business, frustrating staff and patients. Here are a few things to look for when shopping around for EHR vendors.

Specialty-specific– as a physical therapist, you and your patients have different needs than a general practitioner – or any other kind of practitioner for that matter. And your software should meet those specific needs. The design and interface of the software should match your workflows and thought processes.
Billing functionality– though you got into business to help people, the cash flow of your clinic is what allows you to keep doing the good work that you do. Make sure your EHR is equipped with the tools and staff you need to not only bill and file claims but also manage revenue and follow up on claims.
Credit card processing– an often overlooked feature when it comes to choosing an EHR, having credit card processing integrated directly into your EHR saves time and eliminates the need for after-the-fact reconciliation.
Telehealth and client portal– regardless of what the future holds, the COVIDpandemic forever changed the way we deliver healthcare. A telehealth offering is becoming more of the norm ever for physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and patients are coming to expect it. Continue to deliver care with integrated telehealth. You may find it opens doors for your clinic by allowing you to broaden the geographical radius of patients you can serve and by preventing missed appointments for patients who may be anxious, have transportation concerns, face mobility challenges, or any other roadblocks to in-person appointments. A client portal likewise helps bridge the gap between patient and provider by offering document transfer, the ability to view records, and secure messaging.
Intuitive design and great service– what good is onboarding a new software system if it’s too difficult to understand or takes too much time to manage. Don’t let promised functionality take away from your EHRs ROI, find something that’s a pleasure to use. Onboarding should be a breeze, your staff should be adequately trained, and support should be helpful and readily available.

3. Build Your Dream Team

There’s so much more involved in running a successful therapy practice than fantastic patient care. You’ll need to master patient relations, understand software, make sure billing and claims are handled appropriately. So, if you think you’re going to need some extra hands, now is the time to begin your search.

Think strategically about the needs of your practice. Understand if it’s more important to hire a jack-of-all-trades office admin superstar or could you benefit from another provider to double the patient load and bring in revenue to cover overhead. Maybe there’s a particular specialty that would be valuable to have on board.

From there, start reaching out to your network. Ask for referrals to find stellar candidates and start interviewing.

4. Iron Out Billing

Likely, revenue will come from a mix of patient responsibility and insurance payments. Since cash flow is what’s going to keep your business afloat. Here are a few ways to make sure both are working for your new practice.

Patient Responsibility

Offer credit card processing -the ability to accept credit cards is not only more convenient for our patients it can help you capture otherwise lost revenue and prevent missed payments.
Write and post a payment policy– it’s easy for patients to get confused about what is their responsibility, especially if they’re using insurance to cover some of your services. Write an easy-to-understand payment policy and include it with all new patient paperwork and clearly post it in your office.
Automate patient statements – patient statements, whether sent by email or snail mail are an important part of capturing revenue from self-pay patients, but they can be a real drain on your admin staff and postage costs can really add up. Find a service that automates this process for you.

Insurance Billing

Determine what payers you will work with – do some research to find out who the common providers are in your area.
Enrollment and credentialing– before you can start accepting payment from payers you will need to be credentialed and follow through with their enrollment, a process that can take several months, so make sure to start well before you plan on billing.
Learn the codes– when it comes to billing and submitting claims to your insurance providers, make sure to study up on your billing codes to avoid denials and rejections.
Master your revenue cycle– denied and rejected claims can drastically slow down revenue generation. And, as accounts receivable age, they depreciate, so it’s important to get paid as quickly and as easily as possible. Now is the time to learn how to resolve denials, or decide if you’d like to work with a third-party service like a clearinghouse or billing services offered through your EHR.5.

Get Strategic About Marketing

Marketing may seem like an alien landscape, especially if you’re more focused on providing stellar patient care than driving leads. But understanding marketing basics and taking care of those needs now can set your practice up for success.

Start with your brand. Determine what sets your practice apart from others in the area -and back it up with proof and values. Then, find a way to represent these values in assets like your logo, website, print materials, etc.

Once your fundamentals are in place, start getting the word out there. Set some goals andlay out a strategy and timeline for achieving them. Here are some ideas:

Schedule meetings with local physicians and prepare leave-behind materials to build relationships and secure referrals.
Post on social media.
Grab a spot on the local drive-time radio.
Mail a postcard to residents near your office.
Start sending a customer newsletter.

Marketing possibilities are endless. Start with what will give you the most bang for your buck, keep an eye on the results, and optimize as you go.

Here for the Long Run

Building strong foundations prior to the launch of your clinic allows you to blaze a clear path for the future. Have a software partner that not only helps you navigate that path but that solves problems and facilitates growth. Fusion is a full-featured, specialty-specific EHR designed specifically with physical, occupational, and speech therapists in mind. Get a demo and see how we can support your new clinic.

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Fusion is an end-to-end physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy software program specifically designed to meet the unique needs of pediatric therapists. Each of the software’s features merges to create an easy all-in-one practice management solution that helps you streamline and better oversee your pediatric physical therapy practice to take it to the next level.

Benefits of Fusion: End-to-End Physical Therapy Software

Imagine being able to integrate all key processes into a user-friendly clinic management platform. You’ll free up crucial time during your day so you can better focus on your patients and other areas of your practice.

Fusion lets you integrate the following functions:

Therapy scheduling
Therapy billing
Therapy reporting
Therapy documentation

You can manage your entire clinic using practice management software that was designed specifically for pediatric clinics.

Streamlined Scheduling

Fusion provides a fully integrated calendar that lets you manage your practice’s schedules. The click and drag calendar enables rapid updates and lets you effortlessly edit your appointments, set recurring appointments, and send out automated appointment reminders.

Using the color-code preset appointment types in the program, you can peruse your week with a simple glance. You can even customize your own color code.

With multiple viewing options, you’ll rapidly compare your staff schedules, examine therapists’ calendars and sort everything via specialty or location.

Improved Documentation

We understand the importance of staying on top of all documentation and Fusion helps you with the software’s pediatric-specific documentation system.

Built-in pediatric templates save time with evaluations and daily notes.
Track patient progress with easy-to-read graphs
View daily notes and develop progress graphics that outline individual patient reports
Record assessments using pre-built templates of popular standardized tests

Improved Billing

Billing is a notoriously tedious process. With Fusion therapy practice management software, you’ll get paid quicker because the entire billing system becomes fully integrated.

Carry out the following tasks with ease:

Auto-generate claims every time you complete documentation for every appointment. The claim becomes tied to the daily note.
Complete all claims within minutes.
Electronically complete and review claims with the specialized automated E.O.B. system.
Process master bills for any third-party payers for faster payer consolidation.
Rapid online payment processing using the integrated credit card processor to handle patient payments within the EMR.

Real-Time Insights

We know that you want to optimize the performance of your practice. Fusion provides real-time insights coupled with easy-to-use reporting. You can utilize the provided snap-shot view, so you know what’s going on and how best to use your time each day. The improved processes help aid in your decision-making.

You’ll be able to monitor, track and analyze who, what, where, when, why, and how throughout your clinic. You can then create reports that measure and evaluate particular time periods to provide a complete overview, so you know what truly works and what has failed.

Take the reports that you create to review with your team or export the data for future use. You’ll stay on top of all of the details so you can determine how best to proceed with your practice, so you continue meeting and exceeding your short-term and long-term goals.

Fusion: Complete Practice Management Software

Above, we have provided you with the basic benefits of Fusion Practice Management Software, but there is a lot more to the platform than what we have listed so far. We know you’re busy with pediatric pt. and other aspects of care. Using Fusion helps free you to focus on your passions and limit the amount of time you have to spend on mundane, business-related tasks.

Added benefits of Fusion Practice Management Software include:

Ability to auto-create tasks
Control workflows
Easily onboard new therapists and collaborate together
Track the progress of new therapists
In-app messaging
Improved team collaboration
Rapidly receive answers to patient progress and status updates online while supporting complete HIPAA compliance.

Enjoy Peace of Mind

Running a pediatric practice means that you have to toe the line by following all HIPAA regulations. You must always maintain government-level security. Fusion takes the worry out of the process by complying with all HIPAA regulations and maintaining complete security features to meet all government requirements.

Also, if the unthinkable should happen and you face a stress-filled audit, rest assured that all information is legible and easily accessible whenever you need it.

About Fusion

We want you to know our dedication. A group of skilled engineers and pediatric therapists designed and created Fusion when it became clear that there was a need in therapy for a truly stellar EMR with optimum progress monitoring.

Fusion took years to perfect. The all-in-one pediatric therapy software is now trusted by clinics throughout the country. It effectively keeps data and documents safe and secure within the Fusion cloud and lets clinics easily access the information anytime and anywhere from a variety of devices.

At this time, Fusion is trusted by over 10,000 medical professionals and is used in over 1,000 clinics nationwide. That number is also growing on a daily basis.

See What Others Say About Fusion

Fusion remains the only all-in-one pediatric practice management EMR and billing software available on the market. We invite you to take a few moments to read the many testimonials about the practice management software. You’ll also find video testimonials outlining exactly how Fusion has helped other therapists transform their practice.

If we have piqued your interest in Fusion Practice Management software, then we invite you to sign up for a demo today. We are confident that Fusion supplies the solutions you have been looking to truly optimize all aspects of your billing processes. With Fusion, you can take your clinic to a new level of expertise.

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