A Future Physical Therapist's Viewpoint

As a community member, the more community education that can be affectively administered is beneficial for all persons in the community. If more people can be treated at a cost effective price then ultimately more money will be freed up to use on patients who need more one on one care.

The proposed reform is looking to cut all areas of health care and health services. Proper nutrition and shelter are essential to maintaining good health. What the government seems to not be accounting for is the increase in health care costs when they take away essential health services. It is impossible to successfully eliminate many health services and yet lower the budget on health care. Although there are many persons who abuse the current system that is in place, simply eliminating programs that are actually vital to a large population within a community is not the proper way to fix the budget deficit.

As a potential health care provider, some of the provisions and statements seen in the community educator's proposal are both beneficial and hurtful to practicing health care professionals. The reform will personally affect my line of work because physical therapy is already a practice that is extremely limited in the length of care that is able to be provided. Most patients are only allotted less than ten sessions a year which is no where near enough visits to effectively rehab some patients, like someone who recently underwent a serious surgery. However, there are patients that attend physical therapy sessions for instruction on proper body mechanics and tension relief techniques which have many more visits approved than what is actually necessary. Many of these patients could greatly benefit from attending community taught courses, such as proper lifting mechanisms, in order to prevent injury so that the demand for physical therapy is decreased. Decreasing the workload for the therapist will allow more time and resources to be used on patients requiring more intense care. It is also more cost effective to instruct more than one patient at a time.

Community health educators could be the stepping stone to eliminating some of the abuse seen in the system as well as reducing costs that are excessive for performed services.