Movement is Medicine: Access to Healthcare

Regardless of your position on health care, we can all agree that access to health care is important. We need to be able to get in to see our doctors in a reasonable amount of time, and we need access to emergency care.

Currently many people use the emergency room for non-emergent conditions. This creates long waits, and costs significantly more. Urgent care centers have popped up everywhere which would seemingly take the pressure off emergency rooms; however, now many people use Urgent Cares as their primary care physicians. Why? Its faster. Urgent Cares offer the convenience of same-day service and later hours. It’s worth paying the extra cash to get in the same day you want to be seen. These days, primary care physicians are caring for so many patients that when you are sick, you may not be able to get in to see them for several days.

One way to address this overload is to create more access points. For example we can now get our flu shot from our local pharmacists. This not only saves us time, it saves us the cost of our office copay.

There is another access point that many people don’t know about. Physical therapy! Direct access to physical therapy has been available in California since Jan 2014. Many people are still unaware that you can save time and money by directly seeing a physical therapist first for your muscle or joint aches, pains and injuries. In fact, research has shown that physical therapists are the best place to start if you have back or neck pain, want to avoid knee or shoulder surgeries, have osteoarthritis, have sprained your ankle, or have chronic pain.

I know many will still be skeptical as physical therapists can’t diagnose or order imagining. Well, as it is, many insurance companies won’t pay for additional imaging until patients have undergone and failed a conservative course of physical therapy.

Physical therapists are educated and trained in evaluating, assessing, and treating the musculoskeletal system. We are able to clinically test for injuries that may require additional imaging or tests. Many times after a thorough evaluation we will call your physician and get you in sooner.

Beyond quicker access, time and money saved, current research shows that the sooner you get to a physical therapist after experiencing pain or injury, the quicker and more complete your recovery.

The CDC also recognizes and recommends physical therapy as a safe alternative to opioid pain medications.

So next time you tweak your back or twist your knee, remember you can go directly to your physical therapist with the benefits of saving time, money and recovering more quickly.