Ron, You hit the nail on the head. that is exactly why OT is essentially the bottom of the totem pole in the rehab community. Its hard to sell occupation in a world where focus is essentially on somatics. It is far easier to sell OT services to corporate structures which rely on outcome data to show how effective they are (i.e. Inpatient Rehab relies heavilly on OT as it changes key indicators on the FIM and home helath agencies depend on OT to decrease overutilization.) In regards to your question about ways to rejuvinate your business: Have you tried contracting with home health agencies to provide OT services for them? Key points to discuss witth them: Have a thorough knowledge of the payment structure of home care. Let them know how aware you are of the benefits a home health agency receives from competent OT care. Specifically address how OT services can help them to meet the obligations of M0825. This is the OASIS question that asks if a patient will meet a high therapy utilization or not. It is a major add on to the home care agencies bottom line if therapy is indicated at a high utilization rate. Let them know how you can help to reduce costs i.e. decreasing home care aide visits by making patients more independent or by reducing twice a day nursing visits for a diabetic that can't self medicate. Another idea might be to provide services to nursing homes that are having difficulty with behavioral management issues on their dementia units. That is an avenue that I am exploring right now. It seems that most OTs working in nursing homes are not strong at providing interventions for dementia patients. Nursing homes, even ones contracted with contracted therapy agencies, in my area are requesting training and services to assist them in handling behavioral management issues. Jimmie
Jimmie earlier posted a question from the website: http://welcome.to/occupationaltherapy.com Here's another interesting question and partial answer from the site: ======================================== question> When a patient is recovering from an injury, what does he question> want to do? answer>> He wants to go back to doing the activities and occupations answer>> that made his life enjoyable. ======================================== Is this true? Not in my experience! What I've found is that when a person is is actively recovering from their injury, that's IS what they want to do. They want to recover! In other words, the person wants their pain to decrease, or their body to work better -- that's what they want to get better. In my opinion, a person with an injury is primarily focusing on just that, the injury (or illness). Not that people don't think about getting back to their "activities and occupations", but in my experience most people see lost "activities and occupations" as a by-product of their injury or illness, not as the problem(s) to be addressed. I know that as a profession, we want to believe that people recovering from injury want to get back to doing their "activities and occupations" but I just don't think that is the way in which our patients generally think. At least not in my experience. If it was the way people think, our profession would be flourishing, both internally and externally. Ron -- Options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ************************************************************************************** Enroll in Boston University's post-professional Master of Science for OTs Online. Gain the skills and credentials to propel your career. www.otdegree.com/otn ************************************************************************************** --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2ยข/min or less. -- Options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ************************************************************************************** Enroll in Boston University's post-professional Master of Science for OTs Online. Gain the skills and credentials to propel your career. www.otdegree.com/otn **************************************************************************************
