Establishing and maintaining a successful Adaptive Needs Seating Clinic

Michelle Nichols, CPST-I
Larisa Nefedov, MA, CPST-I
Blanca Villasenor, CPST-I

Presenters from two major hospital systems share successes and discuss challenges of running an Adaptive Needs Assessment Clinic from initial development through current implementation.

Follow the challenges and learnings of two major children’s hospital systems in the development and successful implementation of their Adaptive Needs Seating Assessment Clinics. In this session we discuss the need for adaptive seating clinics and the need for thorough, effective evaluation to ensure that our most vulnerable and medically fragile children are able to be transported safely with their caregivers/families.

We discuss the evolution of these seating clinics including barriers to the establishment of seating clinics such as staffing time, space to complete assessments in a welcoming environment, methods for completion of initial evaluation and obtaining demonstration product to ensure all needs are met and that seating systems are a good fit for the child as and people using the product as well as taking the time to ensure these seating systems are compatible in family and/or caregiver vehicles. Unfortunately many providers and therapists prescribing this necessary equipment are not well-versed on child passenger safety as a whole so many mistakenly order incorrect or incompatible equipment for children and their families. Presenters walk through language in letters of medical necessity that our teams have been successful with including diagnosis codes and medical equipment coding for insurance billing purposes.

We then take workshop participants further, discussing the partnerships and connections made with durable medical equipment providers to follow families from the initial seating assessment, the submission of the letter of medical necessity, to medical equipment provider intake, through the insurance approval/denial process, through funding of the seating system and finally delivery and education for families/caregivers on installation and proper use of the product received.

Additionally, we will discuss learnings and challenges in our multi-disciplinary support for Administrative Rule advocacy and will touch on legislative changes made to support the requirement for insurance funding for children in need of this valuable equipment.

1. Learn how two hospital systems built Adaptive Needs Assessment Clinics.
2. Recognize challenges and discover successful remedies, and how programs can evolve.
3. Understand the need for follow-through after the initial assessment has been completed.