September 29, 3:00-4:00 p.m.
Survey of Emotional Burnout and its Effects on Innovation in O&P
Gerald Stark, PhD, MSEM, CPO, LPO, FAAOP(D)
In this session, Stark asks: Has the higher rates of anxiety and burnout of the post-COVID world affected the adoption of new innovations in O&P? The decision process to adopt or reject new innovations is significantly related to the level of anxiety that innovation inherently presents. This anxiety can be alleviated or magnified by different groups based on their assessment of the advantages versus challenges innovation presents. Somewhat counterintuitively the level of innovation is more predictive of group anxiety, rather than anxiety on innovation. It’s not that innovative groups don’t argue; they just argue better.
Stark will discuss a post-COVID survey showing elevated levels of anxiety and burnout for mid-level managers at corporate entities with 11-15 years of experience. It also found one in ten are feeling a high degree of burnout and one in three are at a severe level. Factors responsible for burnout were increased patient volume, management pressure, reimbursement challenges, and career dissatisfaction. Surprisingly, he found that those with less than five years of experience showed the second highest levels of burnout, when they should be the highest levels of fulfillment. This raises concerns as this group ages and faces greater career challenges.
Burnout rates by years of experience showed similar trends as those measuring innovativeness. There was a strong correlation with “technology optimism” and an inversely strong correlation with “technology innovativeness.” Stark says this means that those with higher levels of burnout have a strong hope that innovation will save them, perhaps too much so, but do not want to be the first to try it because the risk is too high.
September 29, 4-5 p.m.
Using Outcome Measures to Justify Medical Necessity, Reimbursement, and Business Development in Real-Life Settings
Jason Kahle, MSMS, CPO, LPO, FAAOP
O&P researchers and associations have been emphasizing the need for outcome measures for over a decade. Generally, however, the people making decisions on O&P outcome committees are researchers who have never fit, billed, or medically justified an O&P device to CMS or other payers. Clinicians, however, care about how outcome measures are applied in clinical practice and to the benefit of patients. This difference, known as ecological validity, emphasizes whether an outcome measure is generalizable to real-life settings, which includes medical justification. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss outcome measures that have the best ecological validity.
The Limb Loss and Preservation Registry and the International Society for Prosthetics & Orthotics have established their sanctioned outcome measures. This presentation will primarily target the clinicians whose priority for using outcome measures is justifying medical necessity and reimbursement to assist them with the real-life everyday setting of being accountable for their patients’ needs.
Directives for quality incentive programs from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology dictate that physicians are paid incentives (or punished) based on four considerations: quality, cost, improvement and interoperability. Kahle suggests that the O&P profession should consider these same outcome measures for all populations of patients; that many outcome measures specific to O&P make very little difference in the real-life setting of reimbursement and medical justification; and that an O&P-specific outcome measure cannot be generalizable to a population of people without a disability.
Being able to strive toward comparing our treated O&P populations to “normative” data should be the goal of every O&P clinician, and therefore the outcomes we use to measure that difference, Kahle says.
October 1, 9:00-10:00am
Communication Can Make or Break Your Business
Tanya Baer, CFom
This session will highlight skills needed to enhance your communication in all aspects of business, whether with patients, referral sources, or your own office staff. Attendees will learn how to improve their communication and see examples of good and bad communication styles.
To see the full program, visit AOPA’s website.
