Faced with a sudden shelter-in-place order in April 2020, mental health therapist Lys Hunt needed a way to serve her patients through the pandemic. Before COVID-19 hit, Hunt had only a single...

Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) face unique challenges when it comes to infection prevention and control. The close-contact nature of SNFs and an older adult population – many with underlying...

The SNF Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program is in for an overhaul. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has been advocating to replace the current program with an alternative that is...

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, therapist Janet Dyer had to quickly find a way to serve all her patients – without compromising their health or her own. As an immunocompromised person herself,...

When you think of healthcare claims, “effortless” is not usually the word that comes to mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. But that’s how one billing consultant described her experience using...

Hospitals and health systems have long struggled with creating, growing and maintaining healthy revenue cycles. The pandemic introduced new challenges when many facilities were forced to cancel...

How do you improve your collection efforts when you’re faced with limited access to both data and insurance carriers? Every collection agency has its challenges, but Marie St. James, Chief...

How can practices protect revenue while serving more patients and improving outcomes? During the COVID-19 pandemic, Southwest Family Medicine was faced with a serious challenge: how to reach...

More Medicare beneficiaries may enter hospice care with complementary Medicare Advantage (MA) plans as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rolls out health plan innovations under...

Over the last few years, skilled nursing facilities have been put through the wringer as they’ve grappled with a new Medicare payment model, higher acuity patients, declining reimbursements,...

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that its phase-out of requests for anticipated payments (RAPs) will be complete in 20221, simplifying the process of billing home...

How is PDPM calculated?   The ABILITY CAREWATCH PDPM calculator uses the payment for each component and is calculated by multiplying the case-mix index (CMI) that corresponds to the patient’s...

Think about a claims- or billing-related issue that you face on a regular basis. Denials. Audits and appeals. Missing reimbursements. Now, what do you need to tackle any of those problems? You...

We live in a world where technology seems to connect just about everything. At home, we ask Google to turn on the lights and wake up our kids. On the way to work, we ask Siri to place our favorite...

Skilled nursing facilities have been using ABILITY applications for more than a decade to increase efficiency, improve resident outcomes, ease reporting compliance and maximize reimbursements....

A lot has happened since last summer when CMS issued guidance for surveys and enhanced enforcement around infection control at skilled nursing facilities. The regulatory agency also authorized...

Long-term care facilities must now have programs in place to deliver COVID-19 vaccinations to all residents and staff who wish to receive them and provide information on the benefits of the...