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Leverage HEP for Medicare E-Visits

Leverage the WebPT HEP to offer e-visits for your Medicare patients. In this article, we’ll focus on how to provide e-visits for patients who already have an HEP care plan.  Note: This article describes using HEP for e-visits. For information on documentation and billing for e-visits, please see our resources here.

IN THIS ARTICLE

Communicating E-Visit Services to Your Patients

Medicare rules allow you (PTs, OTs, and SLPs) to notify your patients that you are offering e-visits. Click here for a list of eligible patients and covered services.

Medicare has not mandated a specific outreach method, so you can use any communication method you have available. Some examples include:

  • WebPT Reach (click here for announcement templates we’ve created to address multiple scenarios).
  • Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
  • Email mailing list (click here for instructions on exporting patient email addresses from the WebPT EMR) 
  • Phone calls

Consider including the following details in your patient outreach:

  • What are e-visits?
  • Which patients are eligible?
  • What are the benefits of e-visits?
  • How to begin an e-visit

Patient Inquiry into E-Visits

Once a patient reaches out to inquire about e-visits, ensure the patient is eligible for e-visits and explain the service:

  • How e-visits works/what to expect
  • Who they’ll be communicating with
  • Costs (copay/coinsurance responsibilities)

Patient Consent to E-Visits

Medicare requires practices to obtain the patient’s verbal consent. You can simply ask the patient if he or she is willing to participate in an e-visit before the therapist addresses the patient’s reason for reaching out. Therapists are required to document that the consent was given in their documentation.

Conducting the E-Visit through HEP

Let’s review an example of how the e-visit will work. You must ensure the patient still has access to the StriveHub mobile app or patient portal.

  1. The patient logs into their StriveHub mobile app or through the Patient Portal to begin the e-visit. 
  2. They’ll use the message feature to send a message to their therapist. Consider providing instructions on what the patient should say when writing their e-visit question/concern message. 
  3. Once the therapist receives the message, they can then respond through the WebPT HEP application by inquiring further into the question/concern or by addressing it. You can consider asking for consent for an e-visit through the HEP portal, if the initial consent was not documented on the patient’s record.

Example Therapist (PT ) and Patient (GG) communication:

Completing the E-visit

Once you begin communication with the patient, you can begin documenting the services provided and tracking the time spent assessing and managing (i.e., using clinical decision-making to update plans and provide guidance) outside of normal treatment sessions for the purpose of helping the patient maintain or progress function. These become the services that can be billed to Medicare.

Medicare has specific guidelines for how to bill for e-visits for which we have many resources on our blog. To start, check out the following resource:

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