FOXcast PT: App Review – “What’s Covered” From CMS

Welcome to FOXcast Physical Therapy. A podcast for clinicians made by clinicians. It’s brought to you by FOX rehabilitation. Find out more at FOXRehab.org.

Jimmy McKay, PT, DPT: Welcome to FOXcast. I’m your host Jimmy Mckay on the program this afternoon. Beth Olson a colleague of mine at FOX Rehab. Welcome to the show.

Beth Olson, PT, DPT, LSVT: Thanks Jimmy.

Jimmy: Today we wanted to get a little bit techie wanted to review an app that we had a tripped across online and that’s called “What’s covered”. It’s actually by CMS. They created this app and pretty much I wanted you to test drive it as a practicing clinician working with older adults. Wanted you to take it for a test drive and see if this thing is as good as they say so let’s go through some categories and let people know if this thing does what it actually says it does. Let’s start with what does it actually do?

Beth: So this is an app which is that say you got your doctor recommended a particular service or procedure. You can go to this app. You can put that service or procedure in this little search engine. And it will tell you whether or not Medicare covers what your doctor has recommended.

Jimmy: So the title of the app the name of the app is pretty aptly titled what’s covered because most of the time people just want to know and they come to us as health care providers. Hey I need to get this done. Is it covered? Now in clinical use. How would you see putting this into practice.

Beth: So often when I go to see people in their homes they’ll say hey my my doctors recommended that I take this medicine and the pharmacy called but I don’t know if it’s covered by my insurance. And almost everybody that I see is covered by Medicare. And so this would be a really quick and easy me to kind of popping into this search engine and see if that medicine is covered or that lab tests or whatever it is. I think it helps to give people a little bit better guidance on how to budget and budget wisely.

Jimmy: Yeah most of the time it’s information or maybe even misinformation it’s good to see that CMS officially coming out with an app like this and clinicians out there listening who use Apple or Android devices what systems does this app run on?

Beth: Its run on all systems. So I think a really good job covering all their bases.

Jimmy: All right let’s get into the nitty gritty user experience. How does this thing feel. Does it work intuitively Is it hard to figure out what was your user experience?

Beth: It wasn’t too bad when you open it up. The very first page that comes up is a big old box that says is my item or service covered. And then there’s a box where you can type in whatever it is. You can also browse by everything that’s in this particular app search engine. Which takes a little bit more time. But if you’re not necessarily sure what something is called you could find it if you kind of look and it’s in alphabetical order. One thing that I did notice is so let’s for instance say that your doctor has recommended that you have an MRI. Well if you just typed in MRI it doesn’t come up it comes up as a non diagnostic test. Which if I were not in the field of physical therapy or health care I would have no idea what that meant and would think oh well I didn’t have an answer. That’s one thing that I did run into that I didn’t particularly care for. But I think for the most part it’s pretty self-explanatory and it’s easy to use.

Jimmy: And as always you know this app came out not long ago hopefully those things will be addressed the more that the people who designed the app and work on the app get user feedback.

Beth: I think so the responses that I’ve seen so far when I’ve put in reviews they’ve been very quick about responding back saying we’re really sorry we we’re working to make sure that more information is added every day. I don’t know what their turnaround time is for adding things but they are being responsive to people who are saying, hey I like the idea and I would really like to see it be a little bit more user friendly when it comes to say the names of certain like an MRI. So they’re they’re trying hard I think.

Jimmy: All right now what’s this thing going to run you what’s the price?

Beth: It’s good news it’s free.

Jimmy: I love the free app. So it is the juice worth the squeeze on this when you got to go with. Yeah. If it’s free and it’s it’s helping you out a little bit.

Beth: So I’m glad they made it free you know because there’s a lot of people the one thing that is though that you do have to have a smartphone in order to have this app.

Jimmy: And now we’ll get into the functionality you know depth of what you’ll be able to do with this thing. What did you rate it on the app function?

Beth: I think it rates pretty high. Most of things that I search did come up and it’s very easy to understand. So for instance when I put in physical therapy what comes up is it is indeed covered by Medicare. It gives you the percentage and then a link could take you to the actual Medicare.Gov Web site for even more information. So I think from a functionality standpoint it does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Jimmy: Getting the right information directly from the horse’s mouth this is from CMS. As we mentioned at the top of the show saving a lot of Googling and a lot of potentially long phone calls to Medicare to find out if the test or service or medication is actually covered. So what would you give this thing overall.

Beth: Give it a 4.5 out of 5 and overall experience.

Jimmy: What’s the last thing you’d want to leave the audience with in terms of overall experience of what’s covered from CMS?

Beth: I think this is a pretty positive thing to have. It’s a quick and easy way to look up things that you might not know if they’re covered. So this is a good thing I think. Not just for the population that we see in geriatrics but also for their families. That can be a whole family affair to figure out what is covered when it comes to your medical expenses.

Jimmy: These days you have access. We have access to so much information. But you want to make sure it’s the right information coming from directly from CMS and knowing you’re getting the good stuff is always a plus. Beth Olson appreciate you taking the time to review what’s covered on FOXcast.

Beth: My pleasure.

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