Skin substitute therapies remain an important option for complex wound care, but 2026 brings heightened compliance pressure for healthcare providers. New payment rules, increased enforcement, and expanded pre-payment review make strong documentation, coding discipline, and vendor oversight essential to protecting reimbursement and reducing regulatory risk.

Source: Windham Brannon

Small billing errors can add up fast. Stephanie Guiliana, CPC, explains how to avoid and address them.

As part of our revised and revitalized outreach efforts, Podiatry Management is now on Facebook and LinkedIn, with more platforms coming soon. Follow our accounts to get (or provide) updates about the podiatry sector, learn more about your colleagues’ work, and engage with the DPM community.

Most practices write off balances constantly and few can explain the policy. That is a revenue leak and an audit exposure at the same time, because an undocumented adjustment looks identical to a missing payment.

MGMA breaks write-offs into distinct categories that deserve separate tracking: contractual, charity, small balance, self-pay and prompt-pay discounts, bad debt, administrative and collection agency write-offs, according to MGMA guidance on collection challenges. The small-balance threshold should be set by what the account actually costs to pursue, not by habit, and anything above a defined dollar amount should require a manager's approval and a note in the system. Review the categories monthly and watch the trend lines. A jump in administrative write-offs is rarely about patients; it usually points at a registration or billing process that broke upstream.

Source: Keith A. Reynolds, Physicians Practice

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act dictates that individuals on Medicaid will need to verify that they work, volunteer, or attend school for 80 hours per month to maintain coverage. The medical frailty exemption allows qualifying persons to forgo this obligation, but it remains unclear what conditions qualify and how patients should prove the severity of their disease. 

Source: Holland & Knight

Skin substitutes are a booming business, which means they’re also ripe for abuse. A look at some recent cases shows the billing practices that have earned unwanted attention from law enforcement.

Source: CarolineFifeMD.com

A cancellation only hurts if the slot stays empty. Keep a running waitlist of patients who have said they would come in sooner, and reach out the moment a slot opens. Many scheduling and texting tools can message the whole list at once and give the appointment to the first person who replies.

This reframes the whole problem. A same-day cancellation stops being a loss and becomes an opportunity, as long as you have someone ready to take the seat. Track your same-day cancellation rate separately from your true no-show rate. As your reminders improve, you want to see cancellations rise and no-shows fall, because a cancellation gives you a chance to recover the visit and a no-show does not.

Source: Keith A. Reynolds, Physicians Practice

Leadership from HHS and CMS recently gathered to discuss progress made since the Health Technology Ecosystem launch last year, including health data interoperability advancements, modern health information exchange standards, and expanded patient access to digital health applications. Watch a recording of the event here and see whether these changes have affected your operations.

When Howard Tucker, MD, JD, and the world’s oldest practicing physician, passed away in December, 2025 at age 103, he left a legacy of care and professionalism few have ever matched. Read more about his work and philosophy here.

We want to get your thoughts on our exciting new direction, and we’d love to hear your ideas about the topics, programs, content, and people you’d like to see more of on this page and in Podiatry Management Magazine.