Inane Paperwork
by AJ Riviezzo
A few quick items on consent to treat forms and a recommendation as well.
1. Have you reviewed your consent to treat form in the past year? If not, you may want to read through it to ensure it addresses how you are actually treating the patient and the risks involved.
2. Do you have a different consent to treat form for each type of procedure? It can be on the same form with a check box noting what you will be doing, but the types of services and the risks are a bit different when performing a phlebectomy verus US guided sclerotherapy.
3. What other services are you offering? Consider having a consent to treat form for ultrasound services. Yes, there is no risk involved with an ultrasound. However it is a very handy piece of paper with a patient’s signature should the patient state they NEVER had an ultrasound performed. Silly I know. I probably get one call a month like this from a patient.
The recommendation on consent to treat forms is to consider having your malpractice carrier review your documents. Many of the malpractice carriers will do this for free and often times have some very good suggestions on how to improve your consent to treat forms.
Advanced Beneficiary Notices – Medicare mandates that an ABN is completed each and every time you perform non-covered services on a Medicare patient. For example, if the patient is coming in for cosmetic sclerotherapy – definitely a non-covered item – you must have an ABN form completed EACH time she comes into the office. Again, a rather silly piece of paper. It is the government trying to protect the Medicare member. Sort of like buying a house and having to sign a government piece of red tape stating that you know this loan is a debt, and to get this loan you need to you need to do a loan application.
If you do not have an ABN on file, it is technically possible for Medicare to mandate you return the patient their monies. Unlikely I agree. But it is much better to have a piece of paper or two on file than to incur any sort of risk.
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