In mid-February, ASHA communicated a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) policy announcement that the agency was implementing a new Medicare policy for supervision of speech-language pathology (SLP) and other therapy students in inpatient hospital settings. The policy, scheduled to be effective April 1, has been withdrawn. ASHA believes the hospital industry was greatly dissatisfied with issues in the policy, had not been adequately involved in its development, and consequently convinced CMS to rescind it.
The Medicare rules on student supervision are now as they were prior to the ill-fated policy revision. The policy for Part B outpatient services remains unchanged, that is, requiring the supervising speech-language pathologist to be in the room and totally involved in the evaluation or treatment session. No official student policy is in effect for Part A inpatients, except for the skilled nursing facility setting, where line-of-sight supervision of therapy students is adequate.
The rescinded policy (Transmittal 65) had also announced that coverage policies for outpatient therapy services would apply to hospital settings unless there was a national inpatient policy that addressed the same topic.
For further information, please contact Mark Kander, ASHA's Director of Health Care Analysis, via e-mail at mkander@asha.org or by phone at 800-498-2071, ext. 4139.
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