Objective: To motivate and enlighten AAPPM members via an informative and interactive discussion with students

Target: Prospective and current members of

the Dr. William M. Scholl Chapter of AAPPM

At 12:00 hours Friday, August 28, 2009, AAPPM agents (Drs.) Hal Ornstein and Benjamin Weaver traveled to North Chicago, Illinois on a mission to brief over 150 AAPPM students of the Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine on the bright future of Practice Management. In addition to informing prospective members of AAPPM about all the benefits of joining the organization, Dr. Ornstein and Dr. Weaver threw out pearls of wisdom for all students interested in office development, staff management and billing and coding. Dr. Ornstein and Dr. Weaver tag-teamed the informative event with wit and humor!

Highlights:

Welcome new patients to your office with an introductory letter!

It’s the small things that matter: thank you cards and lotto

tickets for patients and hard-working office staff go a long way!

INVEST in your office to IMPRESS your patients: digital x-rays

and electronic medical records

READ READ READ Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Marketing Your Clinical Practice

by Neil Baum

BE talkative, BE friendly and STAND out!

Keep up to date with the Practice Management e-Newsletter

Operation Status: Mission accomplished!

~ Nisha Krishnan, SCPM

The Practice Management Mission

The AAPPM Quarterly

N E W S L E T T E R D A T E

V O L U M E 2 , O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9

A National Publication by the Student Chapters of AAPPM

T H E A A P P M Q U A R T E R L Y

I N SI D E T H I S

I S SUE :

Destined for

Success!

2

Is This Service

Truly Covered?

3

Dr. Guiliana Reads

the Minds of

Students

4

AZPOD Clubs Join

Forces!

5

Top row (right to left): Lucinda Malvitz (AAPPM Liai-son), Luke Hunter (President), Nisha Krishnan (Secretary/Editor), Kate Johnson (Vice President), Ruth Devadas (Treasurer)

Bottom row (right to left): Dr. Hal Ornstein, Dr. Benjamin Weaver

P A G E 2

Destined for Success! On Tuesday, September

1st, there was a buzz of excitement in the air as the student chapter of the A A P P M a t T e m p l e University School of Podiatric Medicine held its first introductory meeting! Close to eighty students attended this meeting to enjoy an afternoon of pizza while getting acquainted with the new executive board members. The new president, Jordan Meyers, spoke during the meeting about the infinite benefits of being an AAPPM member and all the events that are planned for the rest of the year.

Our most impressive function of the fall semester Jordan spoke about was a dinner meeting with Dr. Hal Ornstein, Chairman of the American Academy of P o d i a t r i c P r a c t i c e Management practicing at Affiliated Foot and Ankle Center, LLP in Howell, NJ. Students are very eager to meet this legendary speaker, who is infamous for continuously spawning new levels of student success through his prolific teachings and vast wisdom. Dr. Ornstein has also graciously contributed to the dining festivities, allowing students the privilege of enjoying “soul food” catering

by Annointed Hands Catering, as well as bringing a surprise gift to raffle off! We are proud to boast that over 75 members will attend this formal dinner, and are unconditionally ecstatic to enjoy the Dr. Hal Ornstein experience!

Some other events that are

planned for the Fall

semester include meetings

w i th Zac Ch i l dress ,

Pres ident of Darw in

Technologies; Dr. Alison

DeWaters, Trustee of the

AAPPM and graduate of

P e n n - P r e s b y t e r i a n

Residency Program, and

Chad Schwarz, Director of

Patient and Community

Relations of Foot and Ankle

Center, LLP. AAPPM-

TUSPM Student Chapter is

currently at over 110

members, making us the

largest club on campus!

This enormous group of

energetic, enthusiastic

students are ready to get

involved with any and all

functions they can, including

meetings, volunteering,

shadowing, conferences,

residency meetings, and

ev e r yt h ing e l s e w e

undertake at TUSPM to

promote our wonderful

profession. The Vice-

President, Jennifer Falk,

has arranged for the

Practice Management Club

to join forces with the

TUSPM Ambassadors

Program, which will allow us

to increase awareness and

quality student enrollment

into our profession to a new

level through several means

of outreach events planned!

Needless to say, we are

excited about a fantastic

year planned, and striving to

become better each day!

Nafisa Hasan-TUSPM

T H E A A P P M Q U A R T E R L Y

Current AAPPM Chapter Presidents

Ohio — Shyla Narasimhan Arizona — Adam Caton

Pennsylvania — Jordan Meyers Florida — Stephanie Bock

Illinois — Luke Hunter Iowa — Tea Nguyen

California — Gregory Rowan

Is This Service Truly Covered?

P A G E 3 V O L U M E 2 , O C T O B E R

A provision in HIPAA regulations allows insurance companies to deem certain activities as high-risk and thus, to deny

coverage to insured persons who are injured while performing such activities. Unfortunately, HIPAA regulations do not clearly

define the high-risk activities that allow insurers to declare a covered service to be not a covered service. Instead some activities

like skydiving and mountain bike riding are classified as inherently dangerous. What does this mean to the physician? Insurers

have the right to declare a service the physician provides covered in some cases and not covered in others. For example, services your patient received for a foot injury while playing soccer (low-risk activity) will be covered. If your patient received the injury

from snowboarding (high-risk activity), then the services may not be covered due to the nature of the injury. Furthermore, if your

claim has been denied, you may discover that you cannot collect payment from the patient. Why can’t I charge the patient?

Despite the service not being eligible for reimbursement, it is technically still a covered service by the insurer’s plan. Thus by

your provider agreement, you may not oblige payment from the patient.

How does this affect the practice? Being unaware of HIPAA’s provision causes financial damage and poor usage of time.

Staff will have completed unnecessary administrative paperwork prior to seeing the patient and paperwork to file the claim.

Costly procedures will have been performed and the practice is left with not being paid. How can this situation be avoided?

1. Review third party provider agreements. Pay attention to verbiage concerning covered and non-covered services.

2. If the provider agreement does not allow the physician to bill patients for denied covered services due to the nature of the injury, then negotiate a contract giving you the right without conflicting with HIPAA regulations.

3. Document all details of how the patient acquired any injuries and verify the patient’s financial responsibility.

4. Prior to care, communicate to the patient that he is responsible for payment if any services are denied by their insurance.

Kelli Ashe – BUSPM

Weber, Gill. “When a Covered Service Is Not a Covered Service.”

Podiatry Management September 2008: 61-66.

T H E A A P P M Q U A R T E R L Y

The AAPPM Quarterly is an publication of the student AAPPM organizations nationally

and is not intended to be a source for legal information regarding any issue. The pur-

pose of the newsletter is for educational sharing of ideas.

The AAPPM Quarterly is published the following months of each year

January—April—July—October

P A G E 4

Dr. Guiliana Reads the Minds of Students

T H E A A P P M Q U A R T E R L Y

Dr. John Guiliana demonstrated skills

beyond the scope of podiatry, business management, and life skills to the students of OCPM on August 21st and 22nd, in the form of extra sensory perception. His presentation, “Questions I wish I had as a student…” was a virtual question and answer session, but with a twist. Dr. Guiliana had preemptively plucked questions from the minds of students and created a presentation based on those questions. He was able to address many topics that students find themselves wondering outside of the normal “How do I study for Pharmacology?” or “What is the cutaneous innervation of the medial heel?” The questions covering life outside of didactics like, “How do I maximize success?” and business questions such as, “How do I get patients into my office” were explained

and answered by Dr. Guiliana.

Students who attended the presentation gained skills to achieve the maximum success in regards to small AND large goals in life. These skills apply to our mundane medical lives or exams and boards, however, Dr. Guiliana was able to stress the importance of having and achieving success in every other area of life as well. He started with the attributes that a successful podiatrist needs within, and worked outwards towards the skill of communication skills with patients

and other medical practitioners.

Once Dr. Guiliana started students on the road towards leading successful lives, he answered the questions in the minds of the

students on how to be a successful

All podiatric students are entitled to receive PM News, the daily Internet newsletter of Podiatry Management. PM News reaches 11,500 podiatrists and studnets and provides news, coding information, practice management advice, as well as clinical cases submitted by podiatrists. To subscribe send an e-mail to bblock@podiatrym.com It's best to provide a non-school email address, such as gmail, aol, hotmail, etc., as some

school ISPs block PM News.

Barry H. Block, DPM, JD

Editor, Podiatry Management Magazine

How To Get PM NEWS:

businessman. He stressed the importance of how to approach the business of private prac-tice and students learned the difference and importance between advertising and market-

ing.

At this point, students were ready to be suc-cessfully skilled podiatrists, and had learned how to approach the business aspect of being a medical professional, but many students were left wondering, “What is going to be the biggest challenge in my podiatric practice?” Dr. Guiliana described using gamesmanship when encountering challenges, regardless of the challenge. He then approached, what can be the most challenging events of the day, the

resolution of conflicts and customer service.

When the true question and answer session

began at the end of his presentation, students

found it difficult to find any questions that had

not yet been answered by the, now proven,

swami Dr. Guiliana. They managed to scrape

together a few, and Dr. Guiliana answered

them all. It was almost as if he knew our

questions before we raised our hands.

Nathan Hamm– OCPM

P A G E 5 V O L U M E 2 , O C T O B E R

T H E A A P P M Q U A R T E R L Y

AZPOD Clubs Join Forces! This year all of the Podiatric

Medicine clubs at Midwestern

University, including AAPPM, have

banded together in order to promote

podiatric medicine through events

and community outreach projects.

During orientation for the class of

2013, our annual “club day”

achieved 95% enrollment of our first

and second year classes; a first in

our young AAPPM history.

AAPPM has several speakers

scheduled throughout the year,

many with other clubs, and through

this new system, looks forward to

maximal participation

Anne Wakefield– AZPOD

The AAPPM Quarterly Editorial Board

Editor Steven Hawley

Ohio

Editor Anne Wakefield

Arizona

Editor Nisha Krishnan

Illinois

Editor Jordan Meyers Pennsylvania

Editor Kelli Ashe

Florida

Editor Luke Berthelsen

Iowa

Co-Chief Editor Mia Fiegelist

Ohio

Co-Chief Editor Jess Johnson

Ohio