Currently, there is a government proposed regulation to deeply cut Medicare payouts to Physical Therapy providers. The cuts, coupled with legislation that is already set to reduce reimbursement greater than 20% at the end of the year, are so severe, they will result in either (1) physical therapy practices closing their doors and going out of business or (2) ensuring far fewer practices accept Medicare in the future.
A lack of PT practices participating in Medicare, coupled with fewer choices for the consumer directly results in poor care (or no care at all) and bad outcomes. This begs us to ask the question:
"Is it fair to tell people who've paid Medicare their entire lives that they will no longer have access or availability to treatment, simply because Medicare itself created a climate where the treatment is no longer available?"
Consider for a moment the predicament for a person who breaks a hip. Without PT, the hip will certainly heal, but the musculature will atrophy to a point the patient will be disabled or will be left to figure out how to walk again on their own. The best case scenario would be a patient that lives in pain and walks with a limp. The worst case scenario would be another fall, another break, another stint in the hospital.
No one wins from this scenario. The patient fails to get better. Insurance companies have greater expenses for the overall care of this patient over their lifespan. Taxpayers then need to pay more into a system that is not helping patients to begin with.
Please...contact Medicare and tell them that cutting benefits for physical therapy is not a solution,but will only further burden both the patient and the medical community with unnecessarily poor outcomes and greater financial burdens that neither the patient or Medicare can afford.
Posted by Keith P. Waldron PT, DPT
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