Dianne: There is NOTHING ideal about any the situations I work in. They all have limitations and shortcomings. Some are better than others, but they all have good and bad points.
Regardless of your title, you still have a moral and legal obligation to provide treatment which is medically necessary. In part, Medicare's definition of medically necessary means: 1. A therapists skills are required 2. The patient will make significant progress towards their goals within a reasonable period of time. Let me also say that the problem with OT is not so much people like you who are stuck in "people mills". It's the rest of the adult phsy-dys community who DO have the opportunity to address occupation but either don't know how to do it, or don't want to. Lastly, find another job and quite working for greedy healthcare companies. But, they are all pretty much the same. Driven by profit rather than loving, compassionate care. Finally, if finding a better job isn't an option, and it won't work to change the system you are in, about the best you can do is shooting to make it better for you and your patients. ----- Original Message ----- From: Diane Randall <spark...@rcn.com> Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 To: OTlist@OTnow.com <OTlist@OTnow.com> Subj: [OTlist] Vision ~vs~ Reality DR> Honestly Ron, you speak of ideal situations...but many of my patients do not DR> have occupations that they want to work on specfically and I don't even DR> think some are appropriate for therapy...but as a new COTA, I don't think my DR> opinion counts for much. I don't do evals, or set goals or even treatments DR> plan...I just do treatment and bill. I know what functional treatment looks DR> like. My FW rotation represented that but I only had at most two patients at DR> a time that I did not have to share with other professionals. I do what I DR> can to make sure that whatever treatment I am doing is meaningful to the DR> patient in some way. When doing ADL's , I talk with them to find out thier DR> occupational goals. I don't have men who don't cook...cook etc. It seems to DR> be mostly focused on ADL's...which is occupation...I am just not permitted DR> to do that all day long. i guess i am learning as I go. -- Options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/otlist@otnow.com
