Consumer
Knowledge
Knowledge
I have been a physical therapist for the last 17 years.
In EVERY acute care and rehabilitation setting, including nursing homes, whenever a Part A Medicare patient is admitted to the facility, the MDS coordinator, and administration virtually forces physical and occupational therapy to evaluate and admit the patient if there is any money to be made. The people in charge of running these facilities could care less about our training in making judgment calls for appropriate patients that can reasonably be treated and physically rehabilitated by physical therapy. In many cases, a patient has no prior level of function that was reasonable for therapy to pick them up, and some patients were even virtually comatose upon admission. I've screened and evaluated many patients and made the judgment call NOT to admit them into physical therapy at that time due to their prior level of function, and secondary medical conditions. In each case, I was either terminated or literally ignored as I watched them bring another licensed therapist in to evaluate the patient and admit them into physical therapy. I've witnessed these patients then sit for 60 to 75 minutes in the rehab room doing nothing, making no progress, while the administrators pushed the therapy department even harder for numbers to increase their profits from Medicare.
To put it bluntly, they could give a care less of the training I have regarding the professional judgment capacities I am outfitted with, as well as my ethical and legal standards. I am simply a "race horse" to them, producing numbers they go over daily and damn well better be up to their financial expectations. These people behave like deceiving vultures who never take heed to my explanations of ethical and state standards that I must follow.
Millions of dollars annually.
I am a contract traveling physical therapist fulfilling 13 week assignments at different health and rehabilitation care facilities. I've been in several states in search of a medical facility that does not prioritize numbers before the well-being of their patients. It is become worse in the last five years, and I see it only getting worse, as these administrators are virtually neurotic, obsessive - compulsive and full of panic unless the physical therapy department is treating virtually every patient that comes through the door with part A Medicare, or any kind of funds available for them to perform crafty documentation for maximum financial siphoning.
Possibly, as well as video footage of patients rounded up as cattle and placed in large groups while a therapist gives instructions for strengthening exercises. The footage contains many patients slumped over and not participating or responding, but certainly Medicare being billed on behalf of this so-called treatment.
No.
I have only expressed the difficulty I have with seeing what I have witnessed. Again, the administrators totally disregard my concerns. Due to these unresolved problems in Medicare and the lack of concern by the authorities, I can no longer continue practicing physical therapy under the present circumstances. I have therefore decided not to renew my medical license when my current license expires. I plan to be an advocate for the patient, perhaps lobby senators and congressmen regarding the truth of what's happening in the world of Medicare, write about what has been happening in Medicare, and create a stir up like none other that will be simply impossible to be ignored by the authorities. This must be stopped, and someone must take a stand in order for these fraudulent cases to cease and desist.
