Another example came across my desk of the need and common
sense behind direct access to physical therapy services. A story of workers at an Intel plant showed
that may workers who spend their majority of their days on their feet had back
pain. The majority of these people
suffered with this pain because they knew that it would take several weeks to
get to their doctors appointment and get a referral to physical therapy. By the time this happened pain was so bad
that they needed less conservative care or their pain disappeared. It is not a good outcome to have a patient
tell you that their pain just disappeared when you hear the flip side that they
were in pain at work for more than a month at a time.
Times have changed at Intel and now rather than waiting to
see a doctor may employees with routine back pain see a physical therapist
within 2 days. This is in comparison to
the 19 days on average that they took to get in to see a medical doctor. Overall these patients were completing their
program and out of pain within 21 days rather than the average of 52 days with
the old system.
Another issue, not apparent to the public, was that the cost
per patient dropped on average 20% secondarily to fewer unnecessary doctor
visits and diagnostic tests. Every
patient was more satisfied with this trial system and returned to work faster.
Why can't we adopt this simple and effective model in our
health care system. "Early access to low cost effective care seems so
simple yet in our current health care system it remains exception and not the
rule."1 Whenever you see
anything regarding direct access to physical therapy we at Hayashida and
Associates urge you to support it...for
your own good.
