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On November 1, 2011 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the 2012 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule.  In addition to annually making adjustments to the conversion factor that influences all of the CPT codes, CMS on a regular basis evaluates the work relative value units (RVU) that along with the practice expense and malpractice expense drive reimbursement for a particular CPT code.  In 2012, multiple orthopedic codes were evaluated ...

Arthroscopic Hip surgery is quickly becoming one of the most popular operations in sports medicine and many of our hospital partners are beginning to see the volume in their operating rooms.  There are cost concerns, specifically around variability within the procedure and outpatients staying overnight in Observation.   Read on to find out more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/health/hip-impingement-grows-popular-but-remains-unproven.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hip%20procedure&st=cse

I would like to congratulate Agnesian Healthcare for being recognized as one of the top places to work in healthcare.  Accelero Health Partner’s has been working with Agnesian HealthCare for four years across a broad spectrum that includes musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, oncology, women’s health service lines and patient satisfaction across the system.  In that time, Agnesian has become a benchmark performer across all of Accelero’s Seven Success Factors that create distinction.  This award is ...

When a patient elects to have knee replacement or hip replacement procedure, they expect to have a predictable and exceptional functional, clinical, and patient satisfaction outcome.  Simply, demonstrating quality outcomes plays an important role in helping  the consumer and referral source to answer the question – why choose us for your knee replacement?  That is why Accelero invests a significant amount of time working with hospitals and physicians to evaluate their patient outcomes ...

The Medical Center of Lewisville in Lewisville, Texas has been collecting WOMAC^® data since January of 2009.  Their focus on WOMAC^® started at the recommendation of Accelero Health Partners^SM as a functional outcomes tool to track the progress of patients and market their results to referring physicians.  When Accelero launched its web-based data entry and reporting WOMAC^® tool in January of 2010, The Medical Center of Lewisville was the initial partner to utilize the tool.  Focus ...

Effective Community Integration

Because of the wide age demographic of potential patients, a sports medicine program provides a unique opportunity to increase a hospital’s visibility in the community through a large and diverse audience.  In most cases, a larger percentage of sports medicine referrals to the surgeon come directly from the community.  Successfully integrated community relationships and programs are a fundamental component to creating a mindset within the community that your surgeons and hospital ...

As hospitals implement strategies to migrate toward accountable care organizations, it is critical for them to manage chronic disease states such as low back pain, and assess whether they are doing this successfully.  Although many of our hospitals have done a great job tracking spine outcomes on the surgical side (inpatient length of stay, OSWESTRY functional outcomes, clinical complication rates), in order to truly differentiate your program and prepare for our accountable care ...

Agnesian’s Center for Bone and Joint Health in central Wisconsin has had considerable success with their school district relationships not just from a community aspect but also from a financial one.  Over the last three years Zach Pitz, Director of Musculoskeletal Services at Agnesian has been able to expand services to 12-area high schools and two local universities.  This has allowed his staff of five licensed athletic trainers to generate in excess of $1.4 ...

Many of the hospital partners that I work with are always looking to advance their marketing to consumers and referral sources by providing meaningful program information while answering the question “why choose us”.  The Joint Replacement Center at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, NY has really hit the mark.  They recently released their inaugural issue of the Joint Connection, and I firmly believe that this publication provides the right balance of messages to consumers.  If ...