The Medicare Therapy Cap repeal and tripling down on our strengths as DPTs
So, if you haven’t heard, the Medicare therapy cap was recently repealed. This post isn’t intended to give you a detailed description of what the therapy cap is or give a break down of what it means that it was repealed, but instead to make a point that I was thinking about when reading some of the comments on-line after the news broke. If you have no clue what the fuck the Medicare therapy cap is….do you even PT bro? Just kidding, the basic gist is that it was a bundled amount of dollars given to Medicare patients for speech and physical therapy services (most recently as a $2010 total). Once the patient used up that dollar amount, they had to go through exceptions processes to be able to continue to receive therapy services via Medicare. ANYWAY…I have linked a few articles at the bottom if you want to do some further reading on the therapy cap and what the repeal means.
But the big thing that jumped out at me when reading some of the comments people were making was the amount of negative comments. A lot of people were happy with the news, yes, but there were also a lot of comments about how weak the APTA still is as a lobbying group and how our profession, as a whole, doesn’t have the lobbying power that physicians do, which lead to comments about how the profession needs stronger membership in our professional organizations (the APTA), etc., etc., etc.
Now, personally, I do agree with some of those ideas. We could stand to have a stronger voice…it would be great to strengthen the membership numbers…and we should continue to work towards the advancement of our profession within society. BUT, are we missing a huge piece to this equation?? Yeah, I actually think we are.
And that piece is focusing and executing on the strengths we ALREADY have. One of my favorite people to read for learning about business is Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee on twitter and instagram) and one of his beliefs is to triple down on your strengths. Don’t focus on the shit you don’t do well, focus on what you DO do well. And, in my opinion, one of our main strengths as PTs is TIME. And more specifically, the amount of time we have with patients. What is one of the main complaints many patients have about their physician? – “Oh yea they never spend more than a few minutes with me and never listen to what I have to say.” Something along those lines. You have heard that too, right? Well, then maybe we should TRIPLE down on this strength of ours. We do have the time to spend with patients.
Maybe we should actually spend time getting to know our patients as individuals. Maybe we should put effort in to learning what makes them tick. Maybe we should hear them out on what they have to say and show a genuine interest in what they want to accomplish. We have the ability to form much stronger connections with patients. And I think if we do this, make it known that we do this, AND show, through our skills as clinicians, that we truly are THE medical professionals to go to for movement related disorders and injuries, then we just may see the changes we want in how the public views our profession.
Sure, we always want improvement and advancement, but I think some of that can come from actually using the strengths we already do have more effectively.
This is also why it is fucking mind boggling to me when hearing about companies that schedule patients every 15 minutes (maybe rare, but I have heard of it happening). And then you wonder why some people view us as nothing more than a step above a personal trainer. But, that’s a topic for another day I suppose.
Further Reading on the Medicare therapy cap and its repeal if you’re interested:
DPTreality 