Gabby Gifford's amazing story and the release of her book and home video have put rehabilitation medicine and its heroic professionals--the doctors, nurses and therapists -- temporarily in the public eye. But I have no doubt it will soon fall back in the shadows of public consciousness.
Medical rehabilitation isn't sexy. There's no rush of the emergency room -- no gurneys or defibrillators or physicians yelling orders in an environment of barely-controlled chaos. There's no discovering cures or fashioning a human heart out of stem cells. And, while George Clooney would make a handsome rehabilitation physician on TV, the networks aren't lining up to film a pilot involving a rehab hospital.
Rehabilitation does not provide instant results; rather, it is a long, hard road. It is a near-relentless struggle over the course of weeks, months, and even years to help an individual who has been severely injured get back as close as possible to where they were before their injury. It can involve countless hours of hard work and determination just to remember the word for an apple, to gain the motor skills to hold a fork, and the ability to dress oneself again.
It's a journey that most often involves families and friends. It is a road that my children and I walked with my husband Bob when he was severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. But consider this: at some point every one of us will need expert rehabilitation care for a loved one or ourselves. How many of us know someone who has been in a car accident, or had a stroke, or broken a hip? As I move through my 50s, I'm more keenly aware of my own pressing mortality, the fact that anything can happen to myself, my loved ones and my family members. It's simply a fact of life.
It was impossible not to think of our own journey when I watched the home video of Rep. Gabby Giffords working hard and making such great strides. Many things are possible on the journey of recovery. I see them at work every day with Bob. But none of my husband's achievements and his "getting back to himself" would have been possible without rehab.
Sadly, the type of quality medical rehabilitation care that Bob and Rep. Gabby Giffords needed -- and the type of care that you or your loved ones may need in the future -- is at significant risk due to current proposals in Washington proposed as part of deficit reduction. These cuts will reduce patient access to care and threaten the viability of rehabilitation providers. Thousands of people in need of medical rehabilitation will no longer receive these services. Training as well as therapists and medical jobs will be cut -- hospitals will have no choice.
Patients in rehabilitation hospitals are often at their most vulnerable. It's an emotional and scary time, usually following an injury, sudden event or illness. Most Americans already face very real limitations on their access to inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation care -- their insurance runs out or benefits stop before their treatment needs end. The average insurance plan for traumatic brain injury covers six weeks of rehab. That barely begins to scratch the surface of an injury that can take years to heal.
Patients and their families should not unfairly bear the burden of balancing the federal budget. Cheaper is not better. Who would ever choose to see their catastrophically hurt loved one in a nursing home instead of a rehab hospital? But that will be the result if these cuts are approved.
Talk with these people, as well as our returning wounded veterans, about how overwhelming the access and financial challenges can be. At a time when our population is aging and returning veterans are in need of services in their local communities, services will be slashed or eliminated. Rehab is darn hard work -- placing challenging policy and additional access obstacles in front of these patients are not in anyone's interest.
It's easy to put medical rehabilitation at the back-of-the-bus in medicine. But we need to fight cuts that will eliminate access to high quality care for your spouse, your grandmother, and your child. Otherwise, society and each of us will pay in many unanticipated ways, including higher costs, reduced quality of life for the disabled, and higher levels of intense stress for families and caregivers.
Rehab saves lives and families. It saved mine. In my lowest moments, it was the energy, motivation, expertise, and commitment of the professionals and caregivers in rehab hospitals that got me through. I have a very clear memory of walking onto the floor of Bob's inpatient rehab hospital, my spirits at their lowest ebb. I had run out of gas, and my shoulders were hunched in a C-curve. A voice piped up from behind the desk. "Come with me Mrs. Woodruff," the young physical therapist commanded. She shut the door behind her tiny office, " has anyone asked you how you are today?" she inquired, as I burst into tears of gratitude and release. She then proceeded to give me a ten-minute shoulder massage that I will never forget. Her kindness and compassion humbled me that day. And it lifted me up. She had extended her care beyond simply focusing on the patient and offered it to an exhausted caregiver. That's just a tiny slice of the magic that takes place in rehab hospitals. We can't allow these much needed resources to be vastly diminished.
With the skills and support of the therapists, nurses, doctors and caregivers in medical rehabilitation hanging in the balance, I want to lend my voice to wake Washington up. It may not be a sexy, but it's a critical one.
This post has been updated from a previous version.
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Rehabilitation is a team effort that includes all health care providers (and the family)....all on the team are important and all need to be covered services. This is not a democratic or republican issue, this is a matter of social justice and the American dream to which all people in this nation should be allowed access!
Medicare cut therapy payments in two signficant ways this year in LTC, MPPR in January and again with new rules on what counts toward billable therapy in October. Many would say that isn't a cut to the patient but they are wrong. The cuts require more therapists to provide the same services patients received prior to October and MPPR reduces the amount paid for outpatient therapy and the cost to provide the services is on the verge of not being covered by the payment. It will be harder to get the needed services.
Nursing home patients greatly need therapy services too. Most with therapy needs can't tolerate the fast pace of a rehabilitaiton hospital and thus the nursing home is where they go for short term rehab. My mother required rehab and was placed in a nursing facility for 2 months. The therapists were exceptional and she was able to return home, driving a car, shopping on her own and more. Without therapy, the cost to the state via Medicaid would have outweighed the short term costs of her therapy.
Your need will come and we will all be appreciative to have it when it does.
Susan
Of the last 8 years of my life, 7 of them were spent trying to find an insurance plan that didn't contain caps or loopholes that allowed my insurance company to disregard doctors avid requests for physical therapy. The last year was spent finally going 3 times a week... only to discover my search had taken too long. Not only did PT no longer improve things, it didn't even slow them down from getting worse to the point where the PT clinic itself refused to treat me until a doctor gave them a written evaluation that I was healthy enough to continue. As I got worse, I was sent home from work. And last week, my company went under - so I won't even have COBRA 17 days from now.
In 2 days I'll be going to the hospital to meet yet another doctor who will try to figure why on earth someone with a spinal injury who had to spend the last 8 years working full time in order to qualify for health insurance, which habitually over-rode the increasing dire pleas their doctors made for physical therapy, is now barely strong enough to simply make it to a doctor's office.
I have 17 days to get well *and* get a new job, or I lose COBRA and this will be a pre-existing condition.
This is what happens to people who are denied PT.
Bilinguals Inc. / Achieve Beyond Pediatric Therapy & Autism Services
I have to wonder if we could vote on benefits packages for Members of Congress, and had the full power to decide whether or not their roles should benefit from our hard labor and reduced financial stability or not, whether they would allow anyone in this nation to go on without the full and complete medical spectrum access, as needed. Somehow I just don't think healthcare would be swiped at the way they are currently and continually attempting to do. Just betcha that Insurance Companies would suddenly become a lot more humbled and willing to work with the population on giving us full access to excellent care and for all our medical needs, no matter what they are.
What do you say, people? Can we get this idea before your members of Congress? Will you write and call today? I hope you will. Full access to all types of medical care for all Americans now! It's time.
It's why you should abandon a political agenda that says spend more more more because in the end, everything loses funding because they spent too much, promised too much, bought too many votes, borrowed too much money.
Don't vote for the person promising you the most. Those people ARE the problem.