Long Term Care Update - Major Changes to Concurrent Treatment

For those of us working in the Long Term Care arena, major changes are coming as of October 1, 2010. In addition to the changeover from the MDS 2.0 to 3.0 (which has major implications of its own), CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is drastically restricting the benefit of concurrent therapy.


Concurrent therapy is the process whereby more than one patient can be treated by a therapist at the same time, while capturing the full number of minutes on the MDS. For example, if a therapist works with Mrs.A and Mrs.B for a half-hour at the same time, both patients will capture 30 minutes of therapy time. Capturing concurrent treatment results in increased therapist productivity and reduces the cost of therapy provision. After October 1, 2010 the capture of concurrent therapy, while still allowed, will change. Instead of both patients capturing 30 minutes on the MDS, the amount of minutes will be shared. In the above example, each patient will capture 15 minutes of therapy.

While the new RUGS IV hierarchy is being postponed until October 2011, the weighting of reimbursement is being changed in 2010 to reduce some of the financial benefit of providing intensive therapy. The result - increased expense in providing rehab services and a reduction in reimbursement. While rehab remains the highest RUGS reimbursement category, the reduced opportunity to capture the extensive category combined with increased costs and reduced reimbursement will have unknown consequences.

Stay tuned and attend TR's "Thriving and Surviving Under 2010-2011 Changes in LTC: A Guide For Rehab Managers" on July 15.