Audiologists, ASHA Needs Your Input to Meet the Changing Needs of Reimbursement

Congress, Medicare, health insurance payers, health care administrators, and patients—all these groups insist on data-driven, efficient, high-quality health care. They also want to hold providers—including audiologists—accountable. These demands mean that changes to the health care system are inevitable, regardless of presidential and congressional races. In today’s health care economy, just about everyone agrees on the inefficiency of the standard, fee-for-service model. Audiology should embrace the changes in reimbursement, service delivery and consumer options. The bottom line? Audiologists need to move away from a “one-size-fits-all” methodology of diagnostics and treatment and instead focus on: The individual patient and the functional needs in their environment. Answering clinical question quickly and efficiently, using evidence-based diagnostic and treatment methodologies. Offering consumers choices competitive with other available options. Interdisciplinary practice to help establish audiologists as the professional for hearing and balance services. Demonstrating the value—through data—of audiology services. To get to where audiologists need to go, we need to collect data from practitioners who strive daily to solve their patients’ hearing health concerns. To motivate clinicians, Medicare will start scoring audiologists based on quality and outcomes data they provide, and then adjust reimbursement based on those scores. This system will lik...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Audiology Advocacy medicare reimbursement Source Type: blogs