MARCH NEWSLETTER 1. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner . . .
2. Confusion is not Good. Clarity is Good
3. Changing Numbers
4. Sareo Speaks About Special Subject
5. Koehler Revisits Kings Park
6. Upcoming Support Group Meetings
7. Nashville Awaits You! The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner . . . . . . is not something you'll experience when you attend the ASPIRE 10K Road Race this coming Saturday, April 3, 2004, at 9 AM. That's because we'll have a large contingent of A Step Ahead clients watching and participating in this annual event. If you want to compete, please make sure to contact us immediately!
As it has in the past, A Step Ahead will be sponsoring a team and making a donation in the participants' names to ASPIRE, which provides education and assistance to amputees and their family members as they cope with limb loss. We hope to see you there on Saturday! For more information about the race, visit http://www.glirc.org/. Confusion is not Good. Clarity is Good. As we have noted many times in these e-pages previously, A Step Ahead places a high value on client education. This includes not only education about your prosthetic needs, but about insurance/billing issues as well. Billing and insurance, taken together, are inherently confusing, and this confusion can quickly balloon if unchecked. In order to minimize confusion, we are therefore requesting that A Step Ahead clients direct all of their insurance/billing-related questions to the Billing Department. Help us maintain clarity by making sure to comply with this request. We thank you in advance for your cooperation! Changing Numbers In order to comply with HIPAA guidelines, many insurers are now switching insured ID numbers from your social security number to a random identifier. While this is good from a privacy perspective, it is very bad from a claims-handling perspective, as we have already had several claims rejected when we used the old ID.
If you get a new insurance card in the mail, please contact us immediately to confirm that the information we have on file matches your card. This will help us treat you more efficiently, and with fewer headaches. Thanks! Sareo Speaks About Special Subject For some reason, alliteration and Theresa Sareo go hand-in-hand when we write these newsletters. But we digress. On Wednesday, March 31, Theresa (HD) will be speaking at the opening of a special Art Therapy Exhibit sponsored by New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The Exhibit, titled “Creative Healing: Beyond Words”, kicks off on Wednesday at 5:30 pm at Surrogate’s Courthouse, 31 Chambers Street, New York, New York. If you’re interested in attending, please RSVP at 212.341.0025.
For those of you wondering what the heck a “Surrogate’s Courthouse” is, it is a courthouse in which judges with jurisdiction over wills and estates, as well as adoption proceedings, render opinions. Just in case you were wondering. Koehler Revisits Kings Park Shaving 35 seconds per mile off of last year’s pace, Tommy Koehler (BK) completed the Kings Park 15K race in a cool 1:24:40 on March 21. One of the toughest courses on Long Island, the Kings Park 15K attracted close to 750 participants, with Koehler finishing ahead of 340 runners. Koehler will be running next in the upcoming ASPIRE 10K, where last year he took home 1st place in the below-knee amputee category. Great job, Tommy! Upcoming Support Group Meetings Please remember to check the “Upcoming Events” section of our website for information regarding upcoming support group meetings. We post the information as soon as we get it! Also, please note that for those of you who are unable to attend those meetings, the Amputee Coalition of America recently began hosting an on-line support group through its website at www.amputee-coalition.org. Initial response to this innovative support group has been positive, and more meetings are being scheduled in the future to accommodate as many participants as possible. Nashville Awaits You! Remember to book your rooms for the Amputee Coalition of America’s Annual Meeting, August 5-7, 2004, in Nashville Tennessee! This annual event provides consumers the opportunity to attend educational seminars, see the latest product developments, and speak with actual Tennesseeans. David McGill recently returned from his first trip to Tennessee, and reports that residents of that State are alarmingly “nice” and “polite”. Unsure of how exactly to respond to the natives, he spoke slowly and softly, so as not to frighten them. For those of you interested in Tennessee trivia, we have compiled the following obscure facts for you: In 1995, the General Assembly made the Tennessee cave salamander the official state amphibian and the box turtle the official state reptile. Other state symbols include: the Zebra Swallowtail, state butterfly; the Bobwhite Quail, state game bird; Channel Catfish, state commercial fish; Largemouth Bass, state game fish; and the Honeybee, state agricultural insect. Just to provide you a reference point, New York’s corresponding state animals are, respectively: the lawyer; the lawyer; the really cool-looking black and orange butterfly; the pigeon; the 3-eyed Hudson fluke; and the West Nile mosquito. | 
