Experts are promoting the idea of physical therapy as a preventative healthcare measure, similar to dental checkups.
Physical therapist Tyler Detmer, left, works with Jacob Bullard in St. Louis. Such visits should also be preventive, like in dentistry, experts say. If you think physical therapy is only about rehabilitation after surgery or recovering from an accident, think again. For the vast majority, seeing a physical therapist should be about prevention, routine assessment and staying well.
“We’re the best-kept secret in health care,” said Sharon Dunn, the past president of the American Physical Therapy Association. Roger Herr, the current president of the APTA, and Gammon Earhart, associate dean for physical therapy at the medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, echoed Dunn’s prevention message in separate interviews. “We need to change our image by getting out of our silos, out of our brick-and-mortar clinics,” said Dunn, who teaches at LSU. Detmer checks Bullard’s leaps. All 50 states allow physical therapy visits — usually starting around $150 — without a referral from a physician, but insurance may not cover it. The image of the profession tends to be one-dimensional. You’ve had knee surgery, your back keeps acting up or you’re injured and you’ve been referred by a physician to a physical therapist. You go several times, you get an evaluation and you’re discharged with exercises to do and advice about how to move more efficiently. “That’s a big chunk of what physical therapists do,” Earhart said. “But I think a lot of people don’t understand. They think when they have a major medical problem that a physical therapist is going to massage them until they feel better. That’s not what it is.”Many in the profession favor thinking of physical therapists the way we do dentists; patients make appointments for regular exams. “Even if you’re not having any problem, you go in and have everything checked out,” Earhart sai
PHYSICAL THERAPY PREVENTIVE HEALTHCARE REHABILITATION DENTISTRY HEALTHCARE
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