Letter from Diana Godwin

Dear PPSIG Member:

To those PPSIG members that I met at the annual conference at Lake Chelan on March 28th and 29th, I want to say thank you for the warm welcome and the vote of confidence in asking me to serve as your new executive director and legal counsel. For those PPSIG members who were not able to join us, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself and my professional experience in representing independent practice physical therapy clinics. And for all members, I want to outline the new services that are now available to PPSIG members.

I have been an attorney in Oregon since 1976 (and expect to complete the requirements for admission to the Washington Bar within the next 3 months or so). I started representing the physical therapy profession in the 1980’s when I was hired as the contract lobbyist for the Oregon Physical Therapy Association, Oregon’s APTA affiliate. In 1992 I formed Oregon Physical Therapists in Independent Practice (OPTIP), a trade group of PT owned private practice clinics. That group is now 130 members strong and I act as executive director and legal counsel for the group on issues that affect private practice in general (such as changes in Medicare rules and reimbursement, Workers’ Comp rules and reimbursement, licensing board rules, HIPAA, PIP reimbursement, PPO issues, etc.) I routinely attend the national APTA Private Practice section meetings each year to keep up on national issues. My practice on behalf of physical therapists has grown to the extent that I now effectively limit my practice to promoting and protecting their interests.

Last Fall, your PPSIG Board opened discussions with me about the possibility of providing executive director and legal services to PPSIG and its individual members. They invited me to make a presentation at the meeting at Lake Chelan and to make a proposal to the group for providing services. So, here we are.

My work on behalf of PPSIG as a group will be directed by the PPSIG Board. When I identify an issue that I think PPSIG should address, or if an individual member alerts me to an issue, I will take it to the Board for decision. Since I have been working on behalf of private practice PT clinics for almost 20 years, I am aware of most of the issues that affect you and can recommend when PPSIG should get involved on behalf of private practice interests. Sometimes this will involve just sending you timely information that you need to insure regulatory compliance or enhance your reimbursement. Examples might include changes in the L&I rules or reimbursement rates, changes in Medicare Part B rules, changes HIPAA rules, changes in the rules of the Washington Board of Physical Therapy or changes in third party billing policies or rates. I generally take the initiative to track these issues and will send out group e-mail memos to alert you when there is something you need to be informed about.

I have already spent time educating myself about the Washington statutes and administrative rules that govern physical therapy practice. I have been in contact with Kris Waidely, the executive director of the Washington Board of Physical Therapy and am up to speed on the proposed rule changes for licensing PTAs. (I will be sending out a memo as the rules process moves along.)

I have started working with Jackie Barry, the PTWA executive director and PTWA has invited me to attend the forum PTWA is hosting on May 8th for 3rd party payor representatives to educate the payors about physical therapy and to discuss reimbursement issues. I will be attending as PPSIG’s representative and will inform you about anything interesting that comes out of that forum.

I will be sending out a memo later this week to alert all PPSIG clinics about a new contract solicitation by a PPO called TechHealth, and to educate you about a rash of “payment proposals” being sent out by a variety of companies (they pop up like moles) to try and get you (or your busy clinic manager) to agree to take a discount on a bill that a 3rd party payor already owes you. As some you may know, I have been working on the “silent PPO” issue here in Oregon for the past year or so and we have had some considerable success in stopping the application of PPO discounts to workers’ comp payments.

In addition to my billable work each month on issues that affect PPSIG as a group, the Board has decided that as part of your individual membership benefit, you or your clinic manager can call or e-mail me with quick questions or matters that you need some help on. You may need some guidance on a particular rule regarding Medicare or Work Comp or MVA's or you may want me to e-mail you a current version of a letter of protection to use in an MVA case or a sample letter for terminating a third party contract that no longer benefits your clinic. I will keep track of my time responding to these telephone or e-mail questions and that time will be billed to PPSIG. (I’ve already gotten calls from several clinics on various matters, so we’re off and rolling.)

Wait, there’s more to this new benefit being provided to you through your PPSIG membership. If your clinic needs individual legal assistance from time to time on any one of the myriad business, reimbursement or regulatory issues that are involved in running a small business medical clinic, as a PPSIG member you can retain me at the reduced rate of $140/hr. You will be billed individually for that work. Your clinic might need assistance in collecting a large overdue bill from treating an MVA patient when the patient's personal injury lawyer won't return your phone calls (I can usually get through to those lawyers when the clinic billing manager cannot); you might need assistance in drafting or negotiating a new clinic space lease, or with an employment agreement, or filing a fee dispute against an L&I insurer, or responding to a disciplinary complaint that has been filed with the licensing board against one of your staff PT's. Among the other services I can provide to your clinic are regulatory and billing compliance auditing, or reviewing your 3rd party payor contracts to help you make decisions regarding entering into, continuing, or terminating a contract.

I will keep a record each month of the time I spend on PPSIG issues and projects and send a detailed billing for the work at the end of each month. I will be working closely with your elected PPSIG Board to stay within budget.

My office will also be performing administrative services for PPSIG and those services will be billed to PPSIG each month at a separate (much lower) hourly rate. And speaking of administrative services, at the direction of the PPSIG Board, one of my first administrative tasks after writing this memo to introduce myself to you all, is to contact those members who neglected/forgot to renew their membership for this year and ask them to re-join. We want to get the PPSIG membership numbers back up to around 125 or more (we are currently at about 65 members.) The Board is going to be running an ad in the PTWA newsletter urging people to join PPSIG to take advantage of the new membership benefits. I’ll work with the Board and Jackie Barry to get that done.

I will be assisting the Board in preparing a new dues structure for the 2009 membership year to be voted on by the membership via e-mail in July. The new dues structure will include an increase to cover the cost of the new legal and administrative services.

I will also shortly be contacting those of you who pledged to “Fund an Item” at the Chelan meeting and reminding you to get your checks mailed to Bill Carriveau. So, watch for my e-mail, letter or call. I will also be sending out invoices each month for three months to all members for the $150 a month special assessment to fund the marketing/media campaign that was voted on at the meeting at Lake Chelan, so watch for those.

In early December of each year I will send out renewal notices for the new membership year that starts January 1st. We hope that most clinics will submit their renewal form and checks by January 1st, but I expect that there will be “stragglers.” One of my responsibilities as your executive director will be to call the stragglers. If PPSIG is delivering good value, the stragglers should say something like, "oops, I forgot (or I was on vacation) I'll get that in right away." By the end of January, we should be able to have an updated membership list on the website and the renewing members will be sent the new password to access the "members only" section of the PPSIG website.

In closing, let me say how excited I am to be working with PPSIG and I look forward to hearing from you and getting to know each of you individually.

Diana Godwin

Attorney at Law

1500 NE Irving, Ste 370

(503) 224-0019

Fax: (503) 229-0614

e-mail: dianagodwin@earthlink.net