Patients Getting Physical Therapy Who Really Need Psych Services
The prevalence of patients approved for physical therapy visits who ultimately need mental health services and not PT appears to be growing and it's creating broader policy questions. Think of the senior male who goes in for low back pain PT but really doesn't have low back pain - he has dementia, depression and has a possible substance abuse problem. But how physical therapists identify these patients and transition them to appropriate services is difficult, as is a broader question on how health plans ought to incent or reimburse these groups. In this study, we compared utilization of 3 different groups. (Click the graph for details)