cannot see the patient. The reality is if you're not registered with Medicare as par, non- par, you actually cannot treat a Medicare patient, even for cash. I know that a lot of people get upset, “Like what do you mean?” That's the rule. My rule is to make sure if you want to treat people over 65, you've got to register with Medicare par, non-par. Dr. Stu, one of the things that I think a lot of doctors forget is you can have people who are younger that have Medicare. For instance, a person who's been disabled for two years or more permanently will get Medicare. You can have the instances of a child or a spouse that has passed away or a parent that's passed away and that person [inaudible 00:28:46] also have Medicare, so this could be more than just people 65. My rule is there are so many people over 65, why would you not want to be part of Medicare when it pays roughly $40 for a 98941? That's better than most managed care. It's just understanding the Medicare rules. The nice thing Medicare does give us the codes they want. They give us the severity based on those codes. You can know if you pick a high level code, you can get 30 visits, a low-level code 10. The key factor here is doctors have to be aware you must register with Medicare and don't fall to this [inaudible 00:29:16] for chiropractic, you may not opt-out. Opting out is a very specific term that only medical doctors actually can do. Physical therapists actually [inaudible 00:29:27] medical doctor can opt out. When they opt out, they can still treat a Medicare patient, give them a receipt or a super bill that we're all familiar with and the patient can bill Medicare. For chiropractic, there is not that option. A Medicare patient cannot bill chiropractic claims themselves. The chiropractor must, hence why we must register, so something to be very careful of. I’ve had several doctors getting quite a bit of trouble and refund a lot of money and have fines based upon having a Medicare patient come in, pay them cash, they weren't in Medicare. Medicare find out. All that money is to be refunded and there’s fines on top of it. I think that that was a home run for people that are participating in this show Sam because that is something that I get all the time from doctors, especially the newer doctors. I can appreciate that as well, but a lot of times with these doctors that say, “Well, I'm not even going to participate with Medicare.” As you said, you're still going to take care of people that need chiropractic and you're still going to get paid well if you follow the reporting program. The other part of it is if you're going to work with any insurance, you still need to follow proper documentation and this is a cookbook in a sense of how to do it in an easy accessible way. I really like that because so many doctors tell me, “I'm just going to be cash.” Like this last weekend when I did a risk management seminar, I said, “We cover the defense of insurance audits, so how many of you in here will tell me that you're a cash practice?” Number of hands went up. I said, “Are you really cash or are you just a prepaid office because you still are giving 98% of the doctors that say that, not a 100, are still giving receipts to the patient that need to go into the insurance company for the patient to be reimbursed, a little different than what you described the Medicare, but even with those traditional insurance, those doctors are still susceptible to an audit because as a licensed provider, they still have the obligation of being required to demonstrate the need for the services that they're performing.” When you're talking about Medicare in that way about
Dr. Stu:
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