Physical Therapy Month – Financial Benefits of Physical Therapy

October 3, 2023

October is Physical Therapy month in the United States. It is a month where we look at the benefits of physical therapy, define the scope of the profession, and celebrate those that work in the field and those that benefit from it. A focus of physical therapy lately has been its role in trying to help patients avoid complex and expensive surgical procedures, injections, or medications, such as opioids. Often when we are experiencing discomfort, we think of the what can be the quickest fix, but that fix is often only a band aid. Looking at how to fix the problem long term can provide some interesting cost effective savings for our patients. Let’s look at a few of our more common ailments that physical therapists can treat and how therapy can be a great “bang for your buck”!

When determining the value of physical therapy care it is important to look at four aspects of physical therapy services.

• Direct Benefits: reduced pain, increased mobility, reduced burden of disease, longer life expectancy, etc
• Indirect Benefits: reduced costs of other provider services, etc
• Costs: fees for visits, medications, procedure and equipment purchases, time spent at appointments, etc
• Avoided Costs: reduced costs of other provider services, reduced waiting time at a physical therapist vs a physician, etc

To determine if physical therapy has a positive economic value on your life we need to see if the direct benefits exceeds the net costs of indirect benefits, costs, and avoided costs added together.

The report that is listed in our references found that for these 8 common ailments the net economic impact to the patient was positive if you used physical therapy. This means that the benefits you attained from a physical therapy plan of care exceed the cost of your time, travel, other provider costs, etc. The bottom line is that physical therapy can save you time and money!

The positive economic impact of the 8 common ailments were:

• Acute Low Back Pain: $4160
• Vascular Claudication: $24125
• Stress Urinary Incontinence: $10129
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: $39533
• Cancer Rehabilitation: $3514
• Falls Prevention: $2144
• Tennis Elbow: $10739
• Osteoarthritis of the Knee: $13981

At Witte Physical Therapy we have treated all these conditions. If you have any of these or any other condition that physical therapy may help with please contact us to set up a free consultation with a therapist to discuss your situation and if physical therapy is right for you!

References:

https://www.valueofpt.com/globalassets/value-of-pt/economic_value_pt_u.s._report_from_apta-report.pdf