Supervision of Students

I receive several questions per week regarding the supervision requirements of student physical, occupational and speech therapists, student physical therapist assistants and student occupational therapy assistants when they are treating Medicare patients as well as patients with private insurance or under workers compensation. In this article, I will give the answers to the following questions I receive from an outpatient perspective:

• Can students treat Medicare Part B patient’s?
• Can students treat non-Medicare patient’s without the supervising therapist or assistant being present?
• If the supervising therapist or assistant is treating one patient and the student therapist or assistant is treating another patient whose insurance allows the use of students and does not require the supervising therapist or assistant to be present, can I bill for the time each of us spent providing therapy services to the 2 patient’s?

The most frequent question I receive is can students treat Medicare Part B patient’s? The answer is