AAC Funding & Report Writing for Medicare, Medicaid & Insurance

This text-based course is a written transcript of the course, "AAC Funding & report Writing for Medicare, Medicaid & Insurance", presented by Lewis Golinker, Esq. on March 24, 2011.

This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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>> Amy Hansen: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this week's virtual conference on Augmentative Alternative Communication. This week we have with us guest moderator, Filip Loncke and we're very pleased to have him join us again today. Today's expert seminar is entitled, "AAC Funding and Report Writing for Medicare, Medicaid and Insurance" presented by Lewis Golinker. So at this time I'm very pleased to introduce Filip Loncke this afternoon.


>> Filip Loncke: Good morning. Thank you, Amy. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to chair this set of webinars on augmentative and alternative communication. And I am today very excited that Lewis Golinker has accepted to participate. Lewis and I think everybody who knows the field a little bit knows that he's probably the most knowledgeable in the field when it comes to rights of clients, families, rights and modalities of funding, and reimbursement. For all legal aspects he's the "go to" guy. Everybody knows that. I know that clinicians from around the country benefit directly and indirectly from his knowledge and his advice and, so, many clients also benefit from his help. So, Lewis, is an attorney with 29 years of experience in expanding access to funding for SGDs and currently serves as the Advocacy Director for the United States Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, USSAAC. In the United States, he has worked to ensure SGD funding by Medicaid programs throughout the country, Medicare, Tricare and insurers. He also has worked to establish SGD funding in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. He is responsible for the information posted at www.aacfundinghelp.com that you see on the screen and I have looked at many times and I have recommended to people all the time. So without much furtherado, Lou, please tell us everything that we need to know. Thank you.

[Applause]

>> Lewis Golinker: Thank you, Filip, Amy. This session is going to address speech generating device funding by health benefits programs. So, here is the title slide and we'll be going through them in the course of the presentation.

Simple Questions

So let's start with the series of simple questions. First why are we here? Why are we talking about funding? Why are we talking to speech pathologists? Why are we talking about health benefits programs? Each of these questions each of them has a simple answer. Funding is an essential element of service delivery. From their introduction in the middle 1970s speech generated devices have been too expensive, too costly for their user to purchase with their own resources. Our clients needed help then, our clients need help now. Speech pathologists are the single most important person in the funding equation. You need to know about funding because your reports make the difference between a yes and a no. You need to know what to write in your reports and need to know what not to say. Whether you follow the instructions properly or not will make the difference between a yes and a no. Funding for speech generating devices is largely non compensated. So the more you know about the process the more efficient you can be. Getting to yes obviously benefits clients but speech pathologists have an important self interest in this process as well. Last introductory statement is: Why health benefits programs? They're not the only sources of SGD funding but they are the largest. They're the only sources that cover people of all ages, with all conditions and in all living arrangements.