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Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

PART B:

NPPs Can Help With The Tough Cases, Too

Published on Sun May 13, 2007

But you'll need to school your payors to get proper reimbursement.

Myth: Non-physician practitioners (NPPs) can handle only acute care, such as walk-in patients with minor emergencies.
 
Reality: NPPs can handle a whole variety of more complex patients, says Ron Nelson, president of Health Services Associates in Fremont, MI and past president of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. Many NPPs "are integrated as part of the delivery model," especially in rural markets.

Educate your payors: Some payors believe NPPs are cut out to do only urgent care. You should make sure your carrier realizes that NPPs can improve the quality of care in other areas, Nelson notes.

Depending on what data you look at, physician assistants are probably as productive as physicians, or even more so. And nurse practitioners are probably about 80 percent as productive as physicians, claims Nelson.
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