July 11, 2022

As you know, CSWA has been involved in the development of a Compact which would allow clinical social workers to practice in all states that join the Compact without having to become licensed in individual states. For the past 8 months, Laura Groshong, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice, and I have attended the Social Work Compact Technical Advisory Committee meetings monthly, sponsored by the Department of Defense and Council of State Governments.

A document for the Compact has been created which is now available for review by the public, including CSWA members. I encourage all CSWA members to attend one of the two webinars which will be held on July 30 at noon ET and September 8 at 3 pm ET for more detailed information on the Compact. Keith Buckhout and Matt Shafer of the Council of State Governments will be available to explain the process and answer your questions. Registration for these webinars will be on the website shortly.

Among the issues that will be addressed are:

To review the document before the webinars, go to https://compacts.csg.org/compact-updates/social-work/

To submit comments or feedback on the draft, please fill out the online survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/socialworkcompact.

Please let Laura know if you have any questions and watch for an email later this week from our new Administrator, Angela Katona, regarding how to sign up for one of the two webinars.

- Kendra Roberson, PhD, LICSW, CSWA President

- Laura Groshong, LICSW, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice

July 8, 2022

CSWA members have expressed concerns about the way that companies like Betterhelp are providing a kind of mental health treatment based on texting. The lack of direct contact is cause for concern. The asynchronous nature of Betterhelp limits emotional communication.

A new article from California Healthline written by award-winning journalist Harris Meyer, has just come out and has echoed some of these concerns. The article, “Digital Mental Health Companies Draw Scrutiny and Growing Concerns”, can be found at https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/digital-mental-health-companies-scrutiny-concerns/.

Both Marlene Maheu, PhD, who presented a webinar on telemental health for CSWA, and Laura Groshong, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice, are quoted in the article.

June 29, 2022

Please visit the CSWA Position Papers page to view the Position Paper on Dobbs v. Jackson: Supreme Court Opinion on Abortion. 

June 14, 2022

This episode of The Aware Advocate will focus on POS Codes for Medicare; Public Health Emergency extension; and the Social Work Compact development.

POS Codes for Medicare

There remains a lot of confusion about which POS codes should be used for Medicare. Here is a reminder of what Medicare and other insurers are requiring for claims:

Be sure to check with EACH private insurer for a patient to find out what combination of POS and Modifier are being requested so that claims will not be denied.

Public Health Emergency

The Public Health Emergency is predicted to be in effect until the end of 2022, possibly longer. I will be keeping you informed on any changes that take place which may affect Medicare coverage and commercial insurance.

Social Work Compact

As you know, CSWA began working as part of the Technical Assistance Group (TAG) in October of 2021, along with representatives from ASWB, NASW, CSWE, and Department of Defense and the Council of State Governments to create a Social Work Compact. The latter two groups listed are funding the effort to create a compact for clinical social workers that would allow us to work in any state that has joined the Compact. The process for creating the Compact is as follows:

Once the process is moving forward, we will need to have a legislative campaign to pass the Compact in as many states as possible. I will be sending materials to help you make the case for the Compact in your state.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of these issues.

- Laura Groshong, LICSW, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice

June 7, 2022

Below is a Letter to Congress on gun violence that CSWA signed on to with 9 other national organizations which was published in USA Today this morning.

May 25, 2022

The Clinical Social Work Journal (CSWJ) is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue called: Life After the MSW. This special issue will be co-edited by the Editor in Chief of the journal, Melissa D. Grady, PhD and Kendra C. Roberson, PhD, the President of the Clinical Social Work Association (CSWA). In this issue we will be seeking manuscripts that offer readers a mix of historical/scholarly information about the topic, as well as concrete and practical information for soon to be and/or recent MSW graduates. The aim of this special issue is to offer practical advice to newer professionals in the field. We hope that the articles within this special issue can be used by faculty members and supervisors who are helping to train new social work practitioners, as well as by the graduates/students themselves.

Some examples of topics for this special issue could include, but are not limited to issues related to post-masters education, clinical supervision considerations, navigating and/or preparing for the licensure process, practicing clinical social work with a social justice lens, and potential career paths as a clinical social worker.

Interested authors should submit an abstract of no more than 750 words describing the proposed manuscript. Those that are chosen will then be invited to submit full manuscripts that will be between 10-15 pages in length.

Each abstract should include the following:

In addition to the above, full manuscripts will also require

Deadlines for process:

For any questions, please contact Melissa D. Grady at grady@cua.edu or Kendra Roberson at kacey@uw.edu.

May 17, 2022

The Improving Access to Mental Health Act (S.870), which CSWA has been supporting since 2012, has provisionally been included in the omnibus mental health legislation package being developed by the Senate Finance Committee. The request from the Committee is that we find more Republican cosponsors for the bill. This needs to happen by Friday, May 20, 2022 COB.

To review the high points of this bill, they are:

The Committee members/Legislative aides that are most important to this effort are:

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID): Rebecca Alcorn, Senior Policy Advisor, rebecca_alcorn@crapo.senate.gov

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): Nic Pottebaum, Health Policy Advisor, nic_pottebaum@grassley.senate.gov

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): Alaura Ervin, Legislative Assistant, alaura_ervin@cornyn.senate.gov

Sen. John Thune (R-SD): Danielle Janowski, Health Policy Director, danielle_janowski@thune.senate.gov

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC): Angela Wiles, Health Policy Director (HELP Committee), angela_wiles@help.senate.gov

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH): Jack Boyd, Health LC, jack_boyd@portman.senate.gov

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA): Mike Weiss, Health LA, mike_weiss@toomey.senate.gov

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC): Brianna Wood, Legislative Correspondent, brianna_wood@scott.senate.gov

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA): Mary Moody, Health Policy Advisor, mary_moody@cassidy.senate.gov

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK): Cambridge Neal, Legislative Assistant, cambridge_neal@lankford.senate.gov

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT): Rachel Green, Health Policy Advisor, rachel_green@daines.senate.gov

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN): Beth Nelson, Health Policy Director, beth_nelson@young.senate.gov

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE): Shannon Hossinger, Policy Advisor, shannon_hossinger@sasse.senate.gov

Sending the following message to the LAs is a good way to make contact with the senators. You can send your message even if you are not a constituent.

The suggested message is as follows (feel free to use your own language):

“I am [a constituent and] a member of the Clinical Social Work Association. Please consider becoming a cosponsor for S.870 which will provide greater access to mental health and substance use treatment, desperately needed in these difficult times. S. 870 will increase the number of LCSWs who become Medicare providers. Thank you for your consideration.”

As always, please let me know when you have sent your messages.

- Laura Groshong. LICSW, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice

April 27, 2022

I have received a deluge of emails from you about the use of POS “10” for Medicare and other insurers. This guidance that Medicare has provided about this policy is complicated.

The current guidance from CMS is that:

• POS “11” should be used until the end of the Public Health Emergency, timing of which is currently unknown, even though this is not what the POS “11” is for.
• And, as of April 4, 2022, there is some variation according to Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) about whether or not to move to POS “10” as initially stated by CMS.
• Check with YOUR MAC to clarify which POS code is being accepted currently if the patient is being seen through telemental health in their home; for example, technically, if a patient is in their car, the POS code should be “02”.
• You can find your MAC contact information at the CSWA website under “Clinical Practice”.
• The Medicare Modifier for POS codes is still 95. This may seem counterintuitive as 95 is supposed to be for telemental health but it is the only combination that currently works.

Be sure to check with EACH private insurer for a patient to find out what combination of POS and Modifier are being requested so that claims will not be denied.

I hope this resolves the confusion about POS codes. Let me know if there are any other questions.

- Laura Groshong, LICSW, CSWA Director of Policy and Practice

April 24, 2022

There has been some confusion about what Point of Service (POS) Codes should be used for Medicare and other insurers as of April 1, 2022.

As you know, there were changes to POS codes that were announced as of January 1, 2022 to be “available” for Medicare as of April 1, 2022. POS “10”, a new POS code for telemental health services that are provided when the patient is in their home, and the LCSW is in their office or elsewhere. Other POS Codes are “2” which is used when a patient is not in their own home and receiving telemental health services from an LCSW or “11” which is used when seeing a patient in the LCSW’s office.

The Medicare modifier is 95 for any of the above codes.

It appears that the POS 10 is now being used instead of POS 2 for Medicare for reimbursement. All other insurers, public and private, should be contacted about the POS codes that are required for reimbursement of claims. The same goes for which modifier is being used – check with the individual insurer.

For more information, go to https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/place-of-service-codes/Place_of_Service_Code_Set If you have other questions, contact me at lwgroshong@clinicalsocialworkassociation.org.

March 28, 2022

Transgender children have been in the crosshairs of conservative groups in the legislature and elsewhere for the past decade. Amongst legislative attempts to discriminate against them, there have been attempts to ban them from gender-specific bathrooms or from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. Support for transphobic attitudes and actions has grown. Now there is an attempt in Texas to lay blame on parents who affirm their child’s gender identity. This bill is one of the most harmful to trans children, but is the tip of the iceberg; there have been over 235 state-based bills that limit the rights of trans children in 2022 (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nearly-240-anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-in-2022-so-far-with-most-targeting-trans-people/ar-AAVhMSa). The current law that has passed in Texas, abhorrently describes parental support of trans children as child abuse; though, for now, it has been placed on hold by a Texas appeals court.

CSWA believes that gender identity is an integral aspect of our intersectional identities and that children’s rights to express their identities, and to participate in everyday activities of childhood, regardless of this expression, should be protected. LCSWs work with trans-children and adults who have been harmed because their trans identities. To our affiliated colleagues in the Texas Society for Clinical Social Work, we send our support and encouragement to stand strong. No law can persuade us to ignore our ethical stance on respecting the identity of any individual child, and for parents that support and affirm their children. Also notable, the Texas law does nothing to prevent the violence directed toward trans BIPOC youth for being themselves. This violence has increased at alarming rates in the last few years.

As reported by Forbes, 30 trans youth were killed in 2020, including 23 that were BIPOC youth. (Forbes, “Transgender America: 30 Killed And Fatally Shot Already In 2020”, 10/2/20, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/10/02/30-trans-woman-have-now-been-violently-murdered-in-america-in-2020/?sh=296cb38564a4). The work of groups like GLAAD (glaad.org), the Trans Youth Equality Foundation (http://www.transyouthequality.org/), and the Transgender Law Center (https://transgenderlawcenter.org/) are crucial to educating the public and advocating across multiple domains to prevent transphobic violence and discrimination against trans youth and their parents. CSWA supports the work of these groups in preventing harm and protecting trans children.