My personal conference highlights included a an amazingly constructed and delivered McMillan Lecture by Dr. Andrew Guccione, and getting to catch up with some of my former classmates and professors from Quinnipiac University. I also had the opportunity to present two educational sessions. One session was with Dr. Tim Noteboom from Regis University on Collaborative Web Tools, and another was with Rachael Lowe on the future of text books and Physiopedia.

Head on over to Physiopedia to check out our slides from that presentation! I’ll be posting the slides from the web tools talk in a day or so.

In today’s rapidly changing healthcare arena, the timing of this event couldn’t be better. Providing input from the physical therapist’s perspective is important as so many decisions are about to be made. The day has started out well, with some excellent breakfast at the Russell Senate Office Building. Present were the leadership of representative organizations. Left to right: Jay Irrgang (APTA-Orthopaedic section) Scott Ward (APTA) and Bob Rowe (AAOMPT).

General apologies and regrets for the long delay between posts. One of the things I was up to was presenting at the annual APTA Conference in Baltimore with Tim Noteboom. I thought it might be nice to direct all those folks who I coerced into subscribing to my blog by way of a how-to demo to the slides from the presentation.

Here they are posted on my Physiopedia Page.

PT HACKER – APTA 2009

By far, the most exciting event at the APTA Combined Sections Meeting in Las Vegas was the launch of a new brand for the profession. The brand itself is pretty slick, but the exciting part lies simply in the fact that this is the first time in the history of the profession that such a monumental effort to define physical therapy has been undertaken. 

"Physicians are spending 14 percent of their total revenue to simply
obtain what they’ve earned," said Dr. William Dolan, an AMA board
member.

I wonder if physical therapists created the same report, would that 14% number be much higher simply because they "earn" much less than physicians.  If it takes 2 office staff to submit and collect claims, and they are paid similarly in physical therapist and physician offices, and the PT bills $100 per patient, but the physician bills $200 per patient…well?

If that case is true, then physical therapists should be under more pressure to upgrade to more efficient record and claims systems, in addition to the everlasting battle to gain more leverage in negotiations with insurance providers.

I would love to see the APTA report card on insurance!  Perhaps, in conjunction with next year’s AMA report.

Here’s a call to have login at the PT Journal live at the PT Journal website.  I hate the 5 step process requried to log in to the PT Journal site.  And why does the APTA not automatically direct me back to my intended content at PTJ?  It makes me tell it again where I was headed with the "Click here to continue" or "Click to go the the home page" option.  Obviously the website knows what I wanted, just give it to me!

My two-cents can be illustrated in two additional links.

The first, at BEAPT.ORG, is the video embedded below. 

Obviously, this is an APTA marketing video designed to attract people into the profession.  While I admit I skimmed through some of it (10 min was just a bit too long), I was careful to look for anything that remotely resembled a PT treating low back pain.  I did find it at about the 5th minute for 10 seconds or so, without being specifically mentioned.  I don’t know why I thought it would be.  We never treat low back pain, and most physical therapists are not employed in outpatient orthopaedic settings, right?

The second example is a little more on target.  It is an opinion letter written by APTA President, Scott Ward on the USA Today website.  In the piece he mentions high-value issues for our profession and, in plain language, promotes the physical therapists.  This is good grass-roots marketing, though perhaps one without great reach.

ERIC