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Dec 2017 Newsletter: What to Expect When Starting PT School

December, 2017 Newsletter

What to Expect When Starting PT School

Lisa Peterkin, SPT

Everyone goes into their physical therapy program knowing that it’ll be hard work.  Knowing that they just spent the last 4 (probably a lot more) years preparing for admission and another 3 years of classes, studying, and exams. But no matter how much you prepare mentally and academically, you never really know what you’re getting yourself into.

Like many of my classmates, I took two years off in between graduating from college and starting graduate school. However, unlike many of those students, I continued to take classes during that period to complete any missing prerequisites.   I was still in student mode and in the studying mindset when I began graduate school.

As we prepared for our first real exam a month into our first semester, many students feared they had “forgotten how to study” and were very nervous about the quantity of information we needed to know.

Some people passed with flying colors while those who had “forgotten” their regular study habits received a loud wake up call that they would need to rediscover those old study habits in order to pass.  With the emphasis on quizes and exams during the first year, everyone needs to quickly “remember” how to diligently study.

Right before Thanksgiving break, we had our first heavy round of tests with 6 exams within two weeks. Everyone studied harder for our anatomy quizzes than we did for any final we had taken in college.

We looked at the second years, jealous that they were past the madness and stress of first year, wishing we could fast forward in time. And we continued to look at the second years in jealousy for the next 8 months. Little did we know, it wouldn’t get any easier.

After coming back from our first orthopedic rotation over the summer, we were excited
to enter a less demanding year.  We were also happy to be back in the city since most of us were in rural areas for our rotation.

Within the first week of classes,  though we quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be a cake walk, we were all still optimistic that it wasn’t possible to be worse than the stress and rigor we experience the year before.   As the projects and presentations began adding up in each class, it was soon clear that this semester would be far busier than first year. Instead of spending our Sunday’s frantically studying for the week ahead (or playing catch up from the previous week), we were sifting through Google Docs and Google Slides to figure out which presentation was a priority that day and when we needed to meet up with our group members to rehearse and review.

Now that we’re almost done with the first semester of second year and we’ve had
time to reflect while eating too much food during Thanksgiving break, many of us have
realized that this year has been just as hard as first year,  though in a different kind of way. I don’t go home and have a panic attack about how much studying I have to do or how many tests would be taking that following week.  My stress and anxiety is now from the number of presentations I have to give, despite my fear of public speaking , on top of studying for exams, being a tutor, and working in our service learning clinic every week.

Now, we all look to the third years, who are off on their rotations around the country
and are done with didactics, in envy and hope that one day we’ll make it to where they are. Past the seemingly never-ending sea of tests and projects of PT school.

 


 Looking at the landscape of physical therapy practice management, we see a playing field tipped to benefit the payers and hurt the provider. The relationship between payers and providers is adversarial, but billing networks offer solid strategies that allow providers to get back into–and win–the game.

The “network effect” allows a large number of unique providers to capitalize upon their strength in numbers.  Please help us strengthen that network.

If your friend schedules a demonstration of the system, we’ll send you a $25 Amazon gift card
For each friend that you refer that joins our network, we’ll credit you $50 each month the office is contracted with us through the first year!



Nov 2017 Newsletter: Teaching Documentation in a DPT Program

November, 2017 Newsletter

Teaching Documentation in a DPT Program

by Tiffany Enache, PT, DPT, Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Education

Documentation is an important part of the daily life of a physical therapist, and APTA presents high standards in their Defensible Documentation resources (1) and also in the Guide to Physical Therapist Practice (2).  These both serve as very useful resources when designing learning experiences related to documentation in a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) curriculum.  There are many challenges in teaching physical therapy documentation in a DPT curriculum, one of which is the variety of templates that exist throughout differing clinical settings, both in written template format and in electronic format.  Students in our DPT program expressed confusion when each faculty member introduced a new documentation template for their specialty setting, and the students similarly struggled to produce high-quality documentation in the clinical setting during their internships.  Our DPT faculty therefore sought to create a template that could be utilized across all physical therapy settings: from outpatient orthopedics to neurologic to pediatric to acute care.  The faculty standardized the way that we teach such aspects as goal writing and narrative assessments, and encouraged our students to be descriptive in the ways that they write about current level of function, motor control, and functional mobility.  With one consistent framework for teaching documentation, our students grew in skills and articulation, and documentation shifted from a curricular weakness to a curricular strength.

The final remaining challenge was to utilize an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to teach documentation.  Even though our students were demonstrating significant improvements in their documentation skills, the way that we were teaching documentation, as one student stated, “needed updating”.  In the search for an EHR that would meet our needs, there were several features we were looking for: 1) a template that was intuitive enough for both novice learners and faculty; 2) a template that included sufficient breadth to cover all physical therapy settings; 3) a template that encompassed the high standards presented by APTA; 4) an interface that would pass university internet security review; 5) an interface that would be compatible with the academic learning environment; and 6) a company that would be willing to price their product fairly, considering that it would not be used to generate revenue.  

The DPT academic faculty excluded many EHR systems due to price, a common finding being that there was either no price model available for a usage that did not involve billing, or the base price significantly exceeded the budget of the department and would therefore increase the financial burden on the students.  The next triage of exclusion related to the template design.  Now that our students were finally understanding documentation standards, we felt it critical that we not lower our standards in order to embrace the EHR world.  We became increasingly frustrated as we reviewed templates that either lacked high standards, did too much of the work for the student (thereby decreasing their clinical reasoning), or were not usable across different physical therapy settings (many EHRs are built for the outpatient adult orthopedic population).  We struggled to find an EHR company that was willing to customize a template for us, especially considering our financial constraints.

Our solution was bestPT by Billing Dynamix.  From the very first conversation, their sales team was willing to listen to our needs and offered to create a template that met all of our requirements at a fair price.  Even though they had never before offered their EHR for use in the academic setting, they saw the value not only in this collaboration, but also the value in educating future professionals in the field.  We currently use Billing Dynamix for various classroom activities.  For example, students early in the program will enter data into the EHR as their professor conducts a patient examination in front of the class.  This is an excellent introductory learning activity because the instructor can then use the EHR to write up his/her initial evaluation, then spend class time explaining their choice in wording, the location of particular content, and how a narrative assessment, goals, and treatment plan are constructed.  Intermediate and advanced students in the program use the EHR during simulated patient encounters, and are graded on their documentation content and structure.  Future hopes for this EHR include use at the program’s pro bono clinic.  We have been able to construct our EHR templates to give just enough prompting to provide guidance to novice learners, yet not so much prompting such that students would lose the opportunity for development of clinical reasoning and professional language.  

Thank you, Billing Dynamix, for this collaboration.  You are helping to elevate the standards for future DPT professionals!  I look forward to a longstanding relationship with your company.

Tiffany, PT, DPT

(1) http://www.apta.org/Documentation/DefensibleDocumentation/

(2) http://guidetoptpractice.apta.org/

 

 


 
Let’s welcome bestPT Billing’s newest members!
Harry Morgan & Samantha Andrew
 
Mallory Boyd & Stephanie Petrycki
Bit-by-Bit Therapy, Ft Lauderdale, FL
 
Stephanie Grace
 
Amanda Newman
 
Walden Parsons
Integrated Mechanical Care, Sandy Springs, SC
 
Travis Smith
O&W Enterprises,  Stanleytown, VA
Melissa Talley, Roslyn Evans, Carol Howder,
Joanne Principe, & Lisa Ingenito
 

Each new member benefits from and contributes to our network strength.

 


 Looking at the landscape of physical therapy practice management, we see a playing field tipped to benefit the payers and hurt the provider. The relationship between payers and providers is adversarial, but billing networks offer solid strategies that allow providers to get back into–and win–the game.

The “network effect” allows a large number of unique providers to capitalize upon their strength in numbers.  Please help us strengthen that network.

If your friend schedules a demonstration of the system, we’ll send you a $25 Amazon gift card
For each friend that you refer that joins our network, we’ll credit you $50 each month the office is contracted with us through the first year!



Physical Therapy Billing | Member Profile: Kathleen Pegues talks about EHR software at work

Physical Therapy Billing client Kathleen PeguesKathleen Pegues, Occupational Therapist and CEO of Bit by Bit Therapeutic Riding Center, says “Because of our partnership with bestPT, Bit by Bit is now able to concentrate on patient care. More focus on growing our business; less focus on administration, billing and paperwork.”

A change to a new SOAP note system is often difficult because it requires the entire office to learn how to use the new system, including new forms, new menus, and a new workflow. The right SOAP notes system can actually save time and increase the accuracy of patient record documentation. The best approach is to select a system that is customized around the unique needs of your specialty. The critical clinical content should be already expressed in its template designs.  

That’s why Kathleen has recently implemented her PT/OT Evaluation form design and her Plan of Care notes in xDocs, a new tool that allows clinicians to create their own forms, instantly tied to their patient database. Now Bit by Bit is able to concentrate on their patients clinical success without having to worry about missing any information during their physical therapy billing process.