Too often in my professional career have I seen disconnects between visits or even conditions and the relative pain scales through a course of treatment.

At times the value fails to change, or fluctuates without rhyme or reason bringing into question the veracity of the documentation or the quality and/or necessity of the chiropractic care.

Pain scales are the most obvious and useful metric a doctor can use to capture the status of the patient at a given encounter in order to establish the necessity of chiropractic intervention, for it is difficult for a reviewer to question the need for a patient to be treated when the patient is obviously in great pain. What I like most about PayDC, is that the system is designed to have the provider's care plans driven by such metrics throughout the course of care, so a number like a pain scale value tells the story of successful treatment as opposed to being simply a number for an individual visit. An insurer wants to see that the reimbursements they are making are for care that results in recognizeable improvement from the initial visit until discharge, with notable improvement usually within the first 2 weeks.

With a system like PayDC, the software prompts you to explain or re-evaluate your treatment if the metric values are outside of expected ranges, making your care more effective and your notes more solid for retrospective third party review.

Dr. Jeff McGunnigle
McGunnigle Chiropractic, Audobon, NJ