Developing Outpatient Therapy Payment Alternatives (DOTPA)

The Developing Outpatient Therapy Payment Alternatives (DOTPA) project had two main purposes: to identify, collect, and analyze therapy-related information tied to beneficiary need and the effectiveness of outpatient therapy services, and to explore payment method alternatives to the current financial caps on Medicare outpatient therapy services. The assessment forms used to collect items of information on the DOTPA patient sample are available below. (Note: In the downloadable assessment forms, the formatting of some items differs from that of the paper forms actually used during data collection.) The Measurement Report describes analyses evaluating the performance of assessment items as measures of patient functional impairment. The Payment Alternatives Report details results of the exploration of payment alternatives for Medicare outpatient therapy services. The Final Report summarizes the overall results, lessons learned from the DOTPA project, and possible directions for future research.