have the justification that would rely or relay that the way that you're billing it at a higher rate in the average is above or it may make you take a look and go, "Oh, am I billing a 42 because I like to do AK and I want to adjust every area." There's nothing wrong with that. It's not a matter of what you adjust but what is diagnosed. I know doctors who do diversified style techniques that will adjust full spine and that's perfectly acceptable, it's the way my dad did it. However, if the diagnosis is cervical, it's still just a 40. When you see this report, don't panic but take a look at it critically. If you fall way above, certainly, it's something you want to address and it's one of the things we do at the network here is when you get those, I go over with the doctors and say, "Okay. Hey, let's take some files," so we can do something before you run into a problem because one thing that you mentioned earlier that I want to point out. Medicare is the only insurance that can do an extrapolation. What that means is Medicare will request10 files maybe even 100 but not as many as most people think. Base on those files, if Medicare finds a 50% error in those 10, they'll say you had a 50% error in all. Now, good news is you can go back and look at each file but Medicare is just going to come up with that lump and that's where you see these big numbers. We had one that we dealt with the law firm here where a doctor had almost a million dollars where Medicare was saying it was wrong. After we got a hold of it, did the audit, it turned out Medicare found it was only $800. I would tell doctors be careful because it's real easy on the one end as you point out, those auditors have a vested interest in finding something wrong. When you begin to unravel it, I always tell doctors, "Don't panic. It's always better than you think so long as you got some reasonable documentation." I won't say it has to be perfect but make it reasonable. Does it have the ABCs. That report is something you should definitely take a look at but it is not an audit. Thank you. Dr. Ken, before I wrap up, I just want to ask you when a doctor is getting a request from Medicare, they usually just ask for certain visits and I could really ask this to either or both of you let's have a discussion about this for a minute because this is how I want to end the show today. When we get a request as a doctor for visits 8 through 13, but the patient came in for the first 8 visits that Medicare has no information on and they may have come in for a few after. What do we actually send to Medicare along with our signature and all the things that you both have indicated because my concern is that when the doctors comply and they only send in the information that was actually requested along with maybe the treatment plan like you indicated, it doesn't really give necessarily Medicare the information as to why visit 8 through 13 went the way it did because they don't have any information on visit number 1. Can you respond to that for me? Yeah. I just like to do a little housekeeping first. Many doctors are printing their ABN forms offline which is totally acceptable. One of the things that many doctors forget to do is when they print the ABN forms offline, on the top of the ABN form, it says, the notifier. That doctor has to put his or her name and clinic information on there. Otherwise, it's an invalid form that the notifier has to be
Dr. Hoffman:
Dr. Murkowski:
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