Member Questions
NPI Quick Facts
Folks,
I thought I'd send some quick information on the National Provider Identifier (NPI), which is coming up as a requirement soon. Though
there is an in-depth article in the recent access about the changes in Medicare reimbursement, I thought a short 'cheat sheet' might
be helpful to you and your members as well. You can find information on applying for the NPI at the CSWA Website at http://www.associationsites.com/page.cfm?usr=cswa&pageid=3808.
What changes are taking place in Medicare reimbursement?
A new number for reimbursement, the NPI, and a new form for reimbursement, the CMS-1500.
When can LCSWs start using their NPIs?
Any time, but must be in use by May 23, 2007, for Medicare reimbursement, in combination with the CMS-1500.
When can LCSWs start using the CMS-1500 form?
Any time, but must be in use by March 31, 2007, for Medicare reimbursement, in combination with the NPI.
Can LCSWs use the old HCFA-1500 reimbursement form?
Yes, until March 31, 2007, HCFA-1500 forms with your 'legacy' or SSN (not NPI) will be accepted for reimbursement.
Can LCSWs use the NPI with the old HCFA-1500 reimbursement form?
No.
Can LCSWs continue to use their Social Security Number for Medicare reimbursement purposes?
Yes, until March 31, 2007, with the HCFA-1500 form only.
Where can LCSWs find CMS-1500 forms?
There are many web sites and medical form supply stores which stock the CMS-1500. In general, wherever, LCSWs obtained HCFA-1500 forms,
CMS-1500 forms will be available. CMS also has a web site which provides some information on availability in your area, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ElectronicBillingEDITrans/16_1500.asp.
Will paper claims still be accepted by Medicare, or do claims have to be made electronically?
Paper claims will be accepted from sole practitioners who are not covered entities, i.e., have not submitted an electronic claim for payment, as defined in HIPAA.
Please feel free to distribute this to your members and let me know if you have any questions about these changes.
Regards,
Laura Groshong, Director
CSWA Government Relations
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Laura W. Groshong, LICSW
4026 NE 55th Street
Suite C
Seattle, Washington 98105
206-524-3690
lwgroshong@comcast. net
This may answer the questions that some of you may have regarding the change from a Federation to an Association at the national level.
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 10:07:55 AM
Subject: [cswasocieties] Interview from VirginiaFolks-
Fred Levy, VSCSW Newsletter Editor, has done a great job on an interview with Kevin Host, CSWA President, and Richard Yanes, CSWA Executive Director. It very lucidly explains many of the changes in the structure of CSWA from CSWF, and may help members of your society understand them as well. Fred has graciously agreed to share the article with any society who wishes to use it. Please credit him as the author and contact him (fredlevy@widomaker.com ) to make any changes. There is a picture of Richard but unfortunately the one of Kevin didn't come through. Please contact Fred to have him send it directly, if you like.
This is the first of a two-part interview. Fred will share the second part when it is published in the spring.
Many thanks to Fred for writing and making available this interview. Hope you find it helpful,
Laura Groshong, List Moderator
Laura W. Groshong, LICSW
4026 NE 55th Street
Suite C
Seattle, Washington 98105
206-524-3690
lwgroshong@comcast. net
In Depth Interview with
CSWA President Kevin Host LCSW and Richard Yanes, CSWA Executive Director
Part One
By Fred Levy LCSW
This past November 6th, your Newsletter Editor interviewed Kevin Host, LCSW, President of the Clinical Social Work Association (CSWA), and Richard Yanes, Executive Director, to discuss our new national organization. We are featuring this conversation in two parts in this and the spring issue of the Newsletter. Richard Yanes served as the CSWF's last Executive Director, and devoted many years of service to that organization; Kevin was it's last President. Both have been instrumental in guiding clinical social work through this critical transition.
We set up a conference call, and I taped the proceedings with an hand-held dictaphone perched next to my speakerphone; the interview lasted well over an hour. I felt the time fly, feeling privileged to share this groundbreaking moment in our profession's history.
Many thanks to Kevin and Richard for graciously sharing their time, and especially to our intrepid VSCSW Administrative Assistant, Cathy Reiner, for transcribing these many pages. F.L.
Richard: Thank you for setting this up and going over the interview questions. I thought they were excellent questions.
Fred: Thank you, Richard, for sending the more basic information (ed. note - see page 15 for "A Change In the Wind") because that frees up the interview for getting into other things. Thank you both for agreeing to do this interview!
Gentlemen, what caused the undoing of the CSWF, and how will this new organization better serve clinical social work?
Kevin: Great question. We could spend the whole interview talking about that.
I look at structure as being, if not the single most contributing factor, certainly a top leading factor that interfered with the Federation accomplishing its mission. I think the Federation structure that we had, where we had member societies serving as the board of directors as the guiding force for the organization, worked very well in the beginning, but in the last 5-7 years, even as far back as 10 years, it had outgrown its usefulness and was actually interfering in at least two key areas. One was communication with the individual members as to what the national organization was doing, and the second was our ability to attack the membership problem as we saw it. To expand on that a little bit more, the Federation would have to initially speak to the membership through the president of the respective society. That was changed by a by-laws amendment in 2004, but prior to that, the Federation couldn't speak directly to a member in a state society. The other structural impediment was that presidents would change over every two years. It takes a board member two or three meetings just to kind of figure out how the organization works, what it can do, and what's been done before. About the time that a board member or a state president would actually be up and ready to go, their term would expire, and what institutional knowledge they had developed, would often times be lost.
Fred: So you were losing continuity.
Kevin: Absolutely. And not just continuity between the president and the board, but over time, it became difficult for an exiting state president to pass along critical information to the incoming president. So we would have state presidents who would come to Federation board meetings who wouldn't have the by-laws, and/or the procedures and protocols. Through nobody's fault, the new presidents weren't on board to come and start working, so we were almost always in the process of having to rediscover ourselves at every meeting.
We tried diligently to work around that issue, and we thought that the amendments that allowed the Federation leadership to speak directly to each member would expedite things some. I think at that point, a number of societies began to lose faith in the structure and the process, and I think that our changes came perhaps too little too late.
Richard: We really didn't gain effective communication with the membership and individual members, until we made the switch to an association. We still found that the Federation leadership, understandably, had great difficulty passing on our communications to the societies. The presidents were busy running their state organization; they had family lives, and the Federation was thrown in the mix of where and when issues could be handled.
Fred: Richard, I remember you saying, some time back at one of our state board meetings, that you had made the comparison between the old Federation as being a little bit like the United States when we had the Articles of Confederation and that the Association is a little bit like the United States now with the Constitution. Do you still think that way?
Richard: I do with respect to the first part of the point. Even though the Board of the Federation could adopt a policy, the state societies weren't required to either implement or go along with that policy in any way, so we were very much like the first governmental structure of the United States when it first came into being. So it really began not to work for us over time - and it clearly did not work for the U.S. - which is why we made that change. I think a very vivid example of that was our membership initiative. State societies had been in somewhat of a decline in terms of recruiting members (and subsequently members for the Federation), and we generated an initiative, that the board agreed on in spirit, that we would all go back and do some very heavy recruiting in our respective states. We had our Membership Chair, Margie Howe, put together a very strong Power Point presentation on how to increase membership. There were several hours of training with bullet points and tasks, and everyone was encouraged to go and follow the presentation or protocols, or to deviate some, but the idea was to increase membership in each state by 10%. There was no way that the Federation could go into a state and say "Do this, do that, write these letters, have these events." We were always somewhat hampered by the time, ability, and continuity of a particular governance of a state society to enact protocols and initiatives. We were hamstrung in terms of seeing that the initiatives got carried out in each and every state.
Fred: How do you both understand the relationship of the CSWA with each individual state society?
Kevin: This is going to be a nuanced response. The fundamental relationship is between the individual clinical social worker regardless of what state they reside in and the Association. We encourage clinical social workers to belong to both their state society to help promote the profession at a state level, and to the Clinical Social Work Association to help on the national level. So our primary relationship is with individuals. Having said that, for issues that are local to a state, having a strong state society is good for individual state members and for the profession. We can lend our expertise as an association to help out certain societies. We were able to provide Virginia with support in terms of your licensure law.
Fred: Laura (Groshong) has done a terrific job and Mark (O'Shea, our Legislative Chair) sings her praises at every turn - and rightfully so.
Kevin: We see the Association as being collaborative and supportive of societies; we hope as we move forward that societies will both affiliate and seek some support and expertise from us. We, in turn, will want to tap into state societies for national issues; however, our fundamental relationship will always reside with the individual social worker.
Fred: How are NASW and CSWA different?
Kevin: I think it builds a little bit on the origins of the Federation, in that the Federation came into being in response to NASW's maybe not being as focused and diligent in promoting the individual practitioner as I think was warranted. I certainly wouldn't say the NASW is hostile toward clinical issues, but in terms of being as proactive, keeping a finger on the pulse, both at a local and a national level, I am not sure given the breadth and the depth of NASW that they are going to be, if you will, "minding the store" as much as the Clinical Social Work Association is and will be.
Richard: I have to agree. I think it is our focus, which really makes this distinctive. Especially, when it comes down to specific issues, such as clinical education in the schools, we do have the expertise. We can begin to address that type of long-term outlook on a range of broad and specific issues.
Fred: In addition to Laura Groshong serving as Director of Government Relations, what other experts and areas of expertise can individual members in state societies draw from as we deal with issues at a local, statewide, and national level?
Kevin: We have our "Social Work and the Law" hotline, which Lane
Veltcamp of the Kentucky State Society runs. It's available
if you need some consultation, are being deposed, or have some questions
about practice-related issues. We have a hotline that is free and
published. We don't even necessarily require you to be a member
of the organization, although it would help if you were getting
help from our group that you would. That is very tangible.
Fred: What is the 800 number for the hotline?
Richard: The number is 800-270-9739. They will deal with the legal
end of things, but we do address very practical practice business
sorts of situations that people may find themselves in. If people
have questions about ethics as well, we can address those questions.
Kevin: The great thing about the change of being able to communicate
directly with our membership, is that we have really expert, knowledgeable
people out there in the societies, and you know if we want to explore
a new area, we've got the ability to reach out and see what they
have to contribute. That is very helpful for people who have questions
that may be a little arcane. We also represent the profession on
a number of boards. Richard represents the Association on the Mental
Health Liaison Group, which tracks what is happening in federal
congress. Laura attends the ASWB, a board association for state
boards of clinical social work. In fact, in our upcoming Access,
we will have a very cautionary article from Donna DeAngeles from
the ASWB about regulations and good moral character of clinical
social workers, and how state boards can check in on that. We also
have Ann Segals, who is involved with CSWE (Council on Social Work
Education). We are having key people on key national boards which
set policy or regulation, or in some cases, legislation. That is
a partial list; the whole list is very much larger than that.
Fred: Well, that is great, and I think it will give people an idea.
I am hearing two things that I think are important: one is that
we have experienced people who are already up and running, functioning
in key areas; and second that there is a certain flexibility and
expansibility, for lack of a better word, in a kind of pragmatic
way in which resources can be allocated within the Association for
particular needs as they come up. I think that is very important,
that it is not fixed.
Kevin: Correct. That was one of the guiding principles for the committees
that looked into how we were going to develop this structure that
we needed to make some pretty significant changes. That principle
was a flexibility and nimbleness in order to respond to what was
happening in the healthcare world as it changed; it has changed
pretty remarkably.
end of part 1 - look for part 2 soon
