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Andrew M. Ball, MS, PT -> Re: Pulmonary Rehabilitation (August 3, 2001 4:38:00 AM)
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Mcap,
Very well stated. I would add however, as I always do, that the problem with our profession is that most within it have an inablity to conceptualize physical therapy without insurance. Most of us lament the impact that third party payers have upon our practice, but fail to admit to ourselves that if left to a direct free market (like dentistry or optometry - where most pay out of pocket for these services, or at the very least pay up front and then expect subeqent reimbursement), physical therapy would fall flat on it's face.
Our profession has a problem with demonstration of outcomes, that's true. Many of us don't even read peer-reviewed literature on a daily basis in an effort to enhance both professionalism and outcomes in physical therapy practice . . . but we have a bigger problem.
Marketing.
Several years ago, I wrote the first of a long string of controvercial articles in which I said plainly that PTA's have long been the marketing experts in our profession. I know of no other profession that allows its assistants to dictate the boundries of its practice to its supervising profession to the degree that physical therapy does. Try to find parallels in legal assistants, medical assistants, physician assistant, dental hygenists, chiropractic assistants - and you'll find very different intradisciplinary dynamics.
Some people read this as a dig on PTA's. IT IS NOT. I'm simply saying that we should recognize the strengths of our profession and encourage the APTA to organize PT's section on Admin, with PTA leaders, and develop a strategic plan for the marketing of physical therapy services. There is a nod given to this, but the DPT concept has intead taken center stage . . . instead of the other way around.
This would be at the root of my eariler discussions with Jan Richardson way back in the day. I belived, and still believe, that outcomes and marketing of the profession should be the primary goals of the profession, and the DPT a vehicle toward that. I thought that I represented the majority in that view, but I got the distinct impression that as soon as I implied that the DPT shouldn't take the spotlight in the vision statement (though I belive it should be there), Dr. Richardson simply but me (in her mind) in the same class as other PT's who were trying to tell her that DPT is the Devil incarnate - which was never my position - and stopped listening.
I like Dr. Richardson personally, and respect her professionally, but I think that putting DPT primary, with outcomes and marketing as the vehicles for establishing the value of the DPT, was the wrong thing to do. Politically, it turned out to be a bad move for her and I suspect that this issue played a major role in her presidential defeat to Ben Masey, Jr.
Personally, I'm more comfortable with Ben's approach to this issue. The language of the vision statement hasen't changed much, but the tone of it has . . . and it's much closer to using the DPT and evidence-based practice as a vechile rather than as the cure for all that ails us.
Drew
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