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Rob Wainner, John Childs, and I will be at the APTA Private Practice Section’s Annual Conference next week in Orlando. We are presenting, “Building EBP Systems in Private PT Practice: Implications on Consumers, Referral Sources, and Payors at Thursday, November 6 from 11-12:30. If you're there, look us up.
Additionally, we are very pleased that at this PPS meeting, PPS section of APTA, and EIM will formally announce a partnership to offer the FIRST Executive Program for Private Practice Management. The format will be similar to EIM’s Residency Program, in that 90% of the program occurs wherever the student happens to be. The Executive Program is a little shorter than the Residency; it’s a 12-month program of post-professional education for PTs. Basically, it’s designed for owners and senior managers to enhance their business savvy and sophistication with evidence-based business and best practices, which in turn provides a strategic competitive advantage for their practice in the marketplace. And one more tidbit, the Executive Program will offer a tDPT option that includes an Evidence-Based Practice integration course.
Please contact marilyn@evidenceinmotion.com for more information.
larry@physicaltherapist.com
to the tune of 2.3 Million for massages by unlicensed providers as Physical Therapy.
As reported by the Fresno Bee.
Wonder if each massage was 8 minutes?
The cost of secondary education in the US is alarming. The cost of PT education is staggering to say the least.
To combate this and to promote EIM’s new trademarked The Best First Choice in musculoskeltal care brand marketing message, we are starting our first (perhaps annual) Elevator Pitch Competition for PT students.
Here are the specifics, more to follow:
30 Second Elevator Pitch Competition
Why is physical therapy the Best First ChoiceTM in musculoskeletal care?
What?
An elevator pitch is a quick overview that must grab the attention of someone who has twenty seven different things on their mind. Getting to the point quickly is key! For this competition listeners need to believe that physical therapy is the Best First ChoiceTM in musculoskeletal care and be left wanting more information about PT!
Top prize is $1000, second is $500, and third is $250!
Who?
Any PT Student in the US, Anywhere.
When?
Submissions will be taken now thru November 30th
Where?
Submissions can via email @ elevatorpitch@evidenceinmotion.com. You can also share with others on Facebook and on My PT Space!
Rules:
Criteria for Judging:
Judges:
A secret panel of the well know PT and Marketing gurus!
Check out Elevator Pitch info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch or see examples at http://pitches.techcrunch.com/.
Best of luck!
larry@physicaltherapist.com
The Problem: Timely access and provider choice for patients in the UK who need care for musculoskeletal com
plaints but have to wait months to get an appointment with a General Practitioner (so they can then be referred to a Physio).
The Solution: Direct access to services provided by a physical therapist
The Result: Swift, effective care for people of all socioeconomic classes with musculoskeletal disorders leading to reduced work absenteeism, reduced direct costs, and increased patient satisfaction (per the published govt. report commented on in this article). Oh yea, also employment for the 1,800 physiotherapists who have graduate since 2005 and want to treat patients but who cannot find work.
One quarter of all consults from General Practitioners in the UK are for patients with neck and back pain complaints alone. What are they able to offer these patients? Hmmm, it appears the “You have Drugs, Surgery, or Us” option applies internationally…it certainly does in this case.
The Department of Health is calling on the leaders of the NHS to allow direct access. The APTA and its membership has been doing the same for some time now. Excuse me legislators and key health care decision makers: This is not rocket science- what’s not to get?
Round and round and round we go, when will this madness (Medical visit ------ Consult ----------PT) stop nobody knows. However, one thing we do know, and that is that it won’t stop until our patients have the option and ensuing benefits of real (ie. unfettered and reimbursed) Direct Access.
Rob
Does it appear to anyone else that the huge push by CMS for electronic health records might be getting somewhat out of hand?
Dr. Wes elaborates on the info tech zoo in the hospital and the multiple servers that contain specific patient information.
Patients have the option to control their personal health information through a variety of online options such as: Google Health, HealthVault, and myPHR.
Electronic medical records might be used within each practice (physical therapists included).
Professional organizations are spearheading "networks" for members to allow for secure communicating and sharing of patient information between members such as what will be occurring here in Michigan with the Michigan State Medical Society.
Let's not forget the third party payers in this movement. Aetna has partnered up with HealthVault to allow its 17 million members to move their personal health information within an Aetna site to HealthVault.
Maybe it's just me, but what seems to be rapidly occurring appears to lead to a potential chaotic mess. How does the hospital information get to the primary care physician? How do the outside specialists (physical therapists included) in various locations have access and provide information? I'm not sure if all these various health information technologies "talk" to each other. What if they don't? If they don't, it appears to me that the situation is as it is now (although more legible) - islands of information that will require either faxing/printing/scanning/emailing or uploading to get the information where it is needed. If that's the case, thousands of dollars have been spent with the final product missing the objective, IF the objective is for having immediate access to patient information.
Selena
EIM will have lots of resources for you at the 2008 AAOMPT meeting. This is a great opportunity to find out
more about Evidence in Motion (EIM) and why our PT Residency program has 67 students enrolled this year.
EIM's Julie Whitman and Rob Wainner, along with EIM faculty Josh Cleland will be presenting
'Manual Physical Therapy Interventions for the Older Adult' at AAOMPT conference October 29 and 30.
EIM's own Tim Flynn is the president of AAOMPT this year and will be giving the welcome address
Friday morning, October 31.
Kyle Kiesel, one of EIM's faculty, is co-presenting 'An Introduction to the Functional Movement
Assessment: An Integrated Model to Address Regional Interdependence' on Saturday, November 1.
To learn more about Evidence in Motion and our many resources, please click here or contact us at
info@evidenceinmotion.com.
CMS has a Physician Quality Reporting Initiative to apparently assist in determining quality of care. Number 4 on the list, "screening for future fall risk," might be strengthened with better evidence. Evidence does support that once an older adult falls there is a greater likelihood of recurrent falls. Why wait until a fall occurs? Isn't there better data out there to utilize for screening for falls?
In 1997 Bohannon published reference material on comfortable and maximal gait velocities for both genders for 20-79 year olds. Generally healthy women in their 60's ambulate comfortably at 129.6 cm/sec or 2.898 mi/hr; generally healthy men in their 60's ambulate comfortably at 135.9 cm/sec or 3.04 mi/hr.
Do you have a stopwatch? Do you have a 6 m walkway? If you do... if it takes 6 seconds or more for an older adult to walk 6 meters, this is predictive of lower extremity limitation, death and hospitalization. A quick read can be found on Medscape; the original publication is by Cesari et al. Montero-Odasso et al. found that unexplained falls with gait disorders (velocity < .8 m/sec) were not associated with cardiovascular conditions.
How do you screen older adults for risk of falling? Based on evidence, does it appear that measuring gait velocity might give a lot more bang for anyone's buck than asking about number of falls in the last 12 months?
photo via Tombstone generator
Selena
Contemplating joining the APTA? This video is for you!
Selena
JW had me reeling after his post yesterday describing the irrational and irresponsible decision by BC/BS of Minnesota to stop paying for manual therapy codes. Decisions like this are a real kick in the teeth to the physical therapy profession. Our hands are our tools, and just as you wouldn't expect a carpenter to work without a hammer or a surgeon to work without a knife, it is complete nonsense to expect a profession grounded in hands-on techniques to work without their hands. Our ability to defense bad calls like this is only as strong as the evidence supporting our interventions.
Thankfully, this bad news was significantly tempered by a much more optimistic release in the form of a study published in Spine (which JW briefly mentioned as well). Walker et al published, "The Effectiveness of Manual Physical Therapy and Exercise for Mechanical Neck Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial." [via PubMed]
I have given this paper a thorough review on NPA Think Tank, so if you have some time, head over and check out my post there. For those on the fly, here is the take home:
Manual physical therapy and exercise was compared to a minimal intervention approach. Subjects included those with mechanical neck pain with or without upper extremity symptoms. Both thrust and non-thrust joint mobilizations were used over a 6 session treatment period.
● "Manual physical therapy and exercise was significantly more effective in reducing neck pain and disability, and increasing patient-perceived improvements during short- and long-term follow-ups."
This is a solid study which will garner some serious attention. Each time a report like this comes out, the entire profession takes a giant step foward, and will hopefully be more effective in stomping out terrible decisions like that made by BC/BS of Minnesota. JW is right, this study helps make an impairment-based manual physical therapy and exercise approach to mechanical neck pain a "slam dunk!"
Photo courtesy of FreeBirD via Flickr
