Dispensing Medical Braces and Supports: DME In Urgent Care

Dispense Braces and Supports

Urgent Care facilities provide many services, but they may be missing out on one important area of care.

Many Urgent Care center providers are under the impression that they can’t or shouldn’t provide medical braces and supports as pieces of durable medical equipment (DME). But, there are great benefits to providing DME in Urgent Care. Let’s take a closer look at when to use DME in Urgent Care clinics as well as how coverage for them works.

When to Use DME in Urgent Care Clinics

There are many reasons why Urgent Care centers do not take advantage of using DME in their clinics. However, most often it’s from a lack of understanding around:

• Payment issues
• Proper coding
• How to apply it
• When and how to use DMEs on a patient

Many patients walk into an Urgent Care center with sprains or strains. Pieces of DME such as braces, crutches, and compression devices can all help a patient with these types of injuries right in your facility. By adding an Occupational Medicine practice with a nurse practitioner and physician assistant within your urgent care center, your patients don’t need to go to a local orthopedic Urgent Care center for the same level of care.

Too many Urgent Care centers refer out their orthopedic cases these days. Soon, your community will learn not to come to you for those issues anymore and go to the local ortho Urgent Care instead. There is nothing more representative for your injury care than to dispense and apply back supports, hinged knee supports, and walker boots.

Understanding DME Coverage

Clinics may be hesitant about providing medical braces and support because they are uncertain about the coverage.

I have been practicing for over 30 years and have dispensed hundreds of thousands of medical braces and supports with great success for both my patients and our profitability. Often, our profit margin on DME is more than that of the E&M code! This can be a huge, possibly unrealized opportunity for your center.

And while you do want to increase your profit, that’s not what it’s all about. You also want to show your community that they can come to you and trust you for injury care that requires DME.

Insurance for DME

Many insurance carriers are reviewing data and are starting to realize that not many Urgent Care centers provide medical braces and support. This is beginning to result in carriers telling centers they will only provide triage rate contracts because they believe no other services are offered. This can be detrimental to your Urgent Care business and is something that can be easily avoided.

Contact OccDocOne For Help Today!

I have created a web-based tool that can upgrade your providers’ performance, including when and how to provide DME for both Occ Med and urgent care injury patients.