On March 16, 2020, the Department of Defense issued the long awaited Final Rule titled “TRICARE; Addition of Physical Therapist Assistants and Occupational Therapy Assistants as TRICARE-Authorized Providers” with an effective date of April 16, 2020. This means that beginning with dates of services on and after April 16, 2020, a physical therapist assistant (PTA) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) are now considered a TRICARE-Authorized Provider. I originally wrote about this change in an article I published on March 16, 2020 for my Gold Members. On April 15, 2020, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) published an article discussing the

Effective with dates of service beginning on and after January 1, 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will require 2 new modifiers be appended to CPT codes on the claim form when those services are provided “in whole” or “in part” by a physical therapist assistant (PTA) or an occupational therapy assistant (OTA). To make matters worse, beginning with dates of service on and after January 1, 2022, services that contain one of the two modifiers appended to them on the claim form will be paid at 85% of the normal rate of the Medicare allowed amount

A question I often receive is how do I bill for services provided to a Medicare or non-Medicare beneficiary that were provided by a physical therapist assistant (PTA) or an occupational therapy assistant (OTA). The answer to the question depends upon your practice setting. In a private practice setting (you submit claims on a 1500-claim form to the insurance carrier), the services of a PTA or OTA are billed

Question: Under Medicare Part B, what are the supervision requirements of a physical therapist assistant in the private practice setting and non-private practice setting (i.e. hospital, skilled nursing facility, rehab agency, CORF)? Answer:

Question: Under Medicare Part B, what are the supervision requirements of a physical therapist assistant (PTA) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) in the non-private practice setting (i.e. hospital, skilled nursing facility, rehab agency, CORF)? Answer: