Accurate assessment of suicidality remains one of our most difficult tasks. You will learn the latest research on risk factors for suicide. You will increase your skill in eliciting relevant information. Dangers of no-suicide contracts will be reviewed along with other pitfalls of potential liability for failing to prevent suicide.

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Improve assessment skills for suicide risk;
2. Recognize liability for completed suicide;
3. Learn liability prevention strategies

Behavioral Health is constantly changing, and a large percentage of behavioral health organizations have seen a steady increase in denied claims. These health care claims which are rejected or denied lead to millions of dollars of lost revenue each year for health care organizations. Begin turning around the denial rate of your organization by attending Understanding Managed Care: Reducing Denials. This presentation is a must attend event for anyone working in the health care field. Impactful change is possible, and there are proven key steps to reducing insurance denials. Find out more about this topic and what you can do to optimize profitability, decrease costly denials, and improve your daily work load.

After completing this educational activity, participants should be able to:

1. Have a detailed understanding of the authorization and denial process that Managed Care Organizations use;
2. Identify the rules that Managed Care Organization should be following and the appeal rights; and
3. List and be able to utilize the CORE Principles to reduce denials".

What if, for the same hour of work, you could increase your reimbursement by 20%? Or 50%? Or even 100%? It would be like that money you found in the seat cushion, wouldn't it? The reality of most practices is that with correct coding and documentation, revenue increases of this magnitude can be possible. Best of all, it can be achieved without significant new effort by you - it's just a matter of understanding the proper codes and documentation you need to support your charges.

In this session, we introduce you to the basics of Correct Coding including ICD-9 / DSM IV diagnostic code basics, Correct Procedural (CPT) coding for Behavioral Health Professionals. We will focus on basic coding techniques and practices for psychiatric and psychotherapy encounter including hints and tips to reduce denials and improve overall reimbursement.

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Understand what ICD-9, DSM IV, and CPT codes are, what they mean, and when to use them
2. Unerstand how to use Common CPT codes for Behavioral Health Management
3. Increase overall reimbursement through hints and tips they learned for improving coding

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Avoid major pitfalls of both tangible & intangible marketing;
2. . Explain the ramifications of patient services and integrate this knowledge into better patient care; and
3. Develop a marketing budget and an effective 12-Month Marketing Plan, individualized for their practice.

Behavioral Health is constantly changing, and a large percentage of behavioral health organizations have seen a steady increase in denied claim and reduced revenue. These health care claims which are rejected or denied lead to millions of dollars of lost revenue each year for health care organizations. Begin turning around the reduced revenue of your organization by attending Understanding Managed Care: Increasing Profitability. This presentation is a must attend event for anyone working in the health care field. Impactful change is possible, and there are proven key steps to improving revenue. Find out more about this topic and what you can do to optimize profitability, decrease costly denials, gain a full working knowledge of coding, and learn what strategies pay when it comes to collections.

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will:

1. Have an understanding of the importance of data, tracking, and benchmarking and be able to begin to use these principles to improve outcomes in their practice.
2. Be able to utilize at least three strategies to immediately improve their practice's bottom line.
3. Understand the importance of the billing cycle and ways to improve the amount and rate at which revenue is collected.

Health care reform has opened the door to integrating psychiatric mental health and behavioral interventions into medical settings. With a call for the Integrated Medical Home, prevention and patient wellness education will be rewarded as an innovation that will drive down medical costs. This opens the door for psychiatric mental health practitioners of all levels to apply the evidence based practices of the field to short term treatments in primary care settings. To capitalize on this evolution of our professions, we need to understand how to work collaboratively with medical offices, and the new NCQA standards for the patient centered medical home that focuses on early identification, patient education and modalities that can be effective in treatment of psychiatric mental health and behavioral issues in the primary care environment. By understanding the business issues involved with using commercial-based insurance, psychiatric nurses (RN,CNS, or NP), and other psychiatric mental health clinicians will have new opportunities to engage his or her full scope of practice that will directly impact patients' lives.

Participants should be able to:

1. Identify elements of collaboration in medical setting;
2. Understand what is needed to get credentialed and paid for collaborative services;
3. Define the role and training needs to participate in collaborative care;
4. Illuminate the issues involved in creating a model of collaborative care programs in your community; and
5. Understand the steps needed in developing community outreach and collaboration tools.

Walking away from the closed door of our office, into medical offices, opens the door for new applications of psychiatric mental health and behavioral interventions that will drive down medical costs. Collaborating with primary care providers directly in medical offices requires new skills built on the understanding of the office, community and patient cultures. This discussion about the integrated mental health will focus on clinical issues, skill development, complementary and alternative mental health practices and how to work with health care reform to perpetuate a new clinical environment rich in opportunities for clinical research and outcome studies. This presentation will address behavioral interventions indicated for several medical conditions (diabetes, cardiac disease, infertility, pulmonary disease, and autoimmune diseases) as well as the collaborative process. While this presentation will highlight the role of psychiatric nurse in this exciting milieu, it could enhance the knowledge base of all practitioners interested in participating in a integrated medical home.

Participants should be able to:

1. Identify boundaries to the collaborative process and appropriate safeguards for patient information;
2. Define the process for comprehensive assessment and wellness planning;
3. Define the impact of mental illness on specific diseases discussed;
4. Identify collaborative involvement, role in referral and follow up;
5. Develop a tool specific to attendees' practices that will enhance the role, health care management, and communication between team members.

Both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric clinicians tend to underutilize screeners and rating instruments in their busy practices. This is an error worth rectifying expeditiously for the following reasons: use of screeners and rating instruments can actually improve outcomes, it can be very time efficient and many quality tools are available for no charge. This workshop will show videos of a few clinical scenarios and discuss what tools might have been appropriate to use. Copies of noncopyrighted screeners and rating instruments, appropriate for both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric settings, will be made available to participants. A toolkit filled of screeners and rating instruments will be brought to the workshop to show participants how they can create one for their own use.

By participating in this activity, attendees will be able to:

1. Recognize the many noncopyrighted tools available for clinician use covering a range of psychiatric disorders;
2. Define these tools that are very time efficient and improve diagnostic yield; and
3. Describe how to choose the right tool and how to score them.

So you've got the basics of coding and documentation down. Now it's time for the real fun! Just when you thought picking the right code was easy! Here we go into depth regarding advanced of psychiatric and psychotherapy coding, with emphasis on advanced techniques such as the usage of modifiers, places of service other key components to coding correctly for maximizing reimbursement. We will also look at policies and procedures related to improving reimbursement such as benefit checking, service prepayment, payment variance audits and other areas in the revenue cycle. Included in the discussion will be case studies and examples.

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Understand and use advanced and rarely used CPT codes for services.
2. Understand what CPT Modifiers and Places of Service are and how to apply them.
3. Use policies and procedures to improve reimbursement and their relationship to proper coding and charging.

The best examination of a patient's neurocognitive status is a careful history and includes a clinical assessment that looks for variations from normal changes in a patient's neuroanatomy and records specific findings.

By participating in this activity, attendees will be able to:

List the primary domains of the neurocognitive mental status exam. 2) Employ simple, effective clinical tests to probe brain function. 3) Utilize systematic cognitive screening to confidently diagnose common dementia syndromes in geriatric patients.

Both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric clinicians tend to underutilize screeners and rating instruments in their busy practices. This is an error worth rectifying expeditiously for the following reasons: use of screeners and rating instruments can actually improve outcomes, it can be very time efficient and many quality tools are available for no charge. This workshop will show videos of a few clinical scenarios and discuss what tools might have been appropriate to use. Copies of noncopyrighted screeners and rating instruments, appropriate for both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric settings, will be made available to participants. A toolkit filled of screeners and rating instruments will be brought to the workshop to show participants how they can create one for their own use.

By participating in this activity, attendees will be able to:

1. Recognize the many noncopyrighted tools available for clinician use covering a range of psychiatric disorders;
2. Define these tools that are very time efficient and improve diagnostic yield; and
3. Describe how to choose the right tool and how to score them.

Upon the completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Avoid major pitfalls of both tangible & intangible marketing;
2. Understand the ramifications of Customer Service & know how to offer patients "star treatment"; and
3. Develop a marketing budget and an effective 12-Month Marketing Plan, individualized for their practice.

Dr. Weiner, a nationally regarded clinician and educator, has dedicated his career to helping health care professionals from medical students to chairmen of departments become happier people and better clinicians. This course, which will allow active audience participation, is based on years of working with stressed clinicians individually and in groups. At the end of this course, the audience will learn tools to successfully work on three things:

1. Identify the top causes of his or her professional stress.
2. Map out a personal plan to diminish or eliminate these stresses.
3. Create "SMART" goals and clear outcome measures to better align your career with what you value in life.