function deficiency and there's a follow-up plan of care. This measure is to collect data when functional assessments are conducted. It can be reported when there's no deficiency just like when there's no pain and there's also situations again if you forget, so just like the other one there's all those separate situations. Obviously, the most common is doing it as positive. Here's what we have to remember, it's only once every 30 days. It is not required on every visit, so again every 30 days is when we do it, but we still report on it each time they come in. Let's get into the reporting, when a patient comes in and they have a functional assessment done and it appears as positive, there’s some sort of dysfunction, we report it with the code G8539. It appears on the 1500 and you notice you’ll have another little cut out of it, notice 98940 AT, G8730 because that’s telling them that there was a pain scale and G8539 means there's a functional scale. Yes that means there are three codes per day because you have to report each. Notice they're just the one penny value, again that penny we don't collect, but that's all there is to it. We report this. Pain is positive, functional scale is positive with a continuing plan. Now, because we only do this every 30 days, what do we report on the next visit? Well, here's what we report on the next visit, we report G8942 and that says “There's one on file within the previous 30 days.” You notice the first bullet here says, “Functional outcome assessment and treatment plan documented within the previous 30 days,” so if I do one today for the next 30 days or the next 30 days when patient comes in, I'm going to report G8942 on the 1500 to simply inform Medicare there is a functional scale on file. Again, it's 8539 on the first visit or the visit that you did the function scale and then 8942 at every visit thereafter until another 30th day. Again, every visit G8942. There's going to be issues where the patient comes in and maybe something appears when we've got a problem. Well, the first thing would be here, what if the patient comes in, like you said Stu, the patient goes, “I feel great, everything is doing well.” We do the functional assessment and it comes up almost to a zero, well when that happens we record G8542 because in the third bullet here it says, “This means your patient has no functional deficits.” In other words, you're saying, “Hey, they're well, they're fine.” Again, if they've reached this point, any treatment thereafter barring a flare-up or exacerbation would be considered maintenance. Again, this is just letting Medicare know that the patient has completed and has resolved, so G8942 between the 30 days, G8542 when it's negative. Like we had with the pain scale, there's going to be other scenarios, where there can be circumstances that may not fit. For instance, what if a patient comes in and says, “I do not like filling out this form.” Stu, you practiced long enough to know sometimes patients hate filling out forms and they may say …
Dr. Stu:
[inaudible 00:40:49].
Dr. Sam:
“I don’t want to do it.” If they don't want to do it, let's not fight with them. Now, could you just ask the questions and fill it out? You could, but what if the patient says, “I don't want to do it,” you report G8540, the patient refused. Again Medicare doesn't mean that you have to do with every patient, just show that you’ve made an attempts. If the
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