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In order to continue physical therapy in the calendar year in this case, you must pay out-of-pocket for your appointments, and you will not be able to submit those out-of-pocket payments for reimbursement by your insurance company.
Generally, 30 physical therapy visits are allotted for physical therapy in a calendar year. In rare cases, you may have no benefit limit for physical therapy, meaning that you have unlimited physical therapy visits in the calendar year.
However, all physical therapy services must be deemed medically necessary for coverage, which means that you cannot just simply see a physical therapist for the sake of seeing a physical therapist — there must be a medical reason for your visit.
Now that you have a good grasp on the key insurance terminologies we can dive into whether or not your particular insurance will cover a physical therapy appointment. To determine the physical therapy benefits under your specific insurance plan, you will need to do a little work.
Here are a few different options to determine your specific physical therapy benefits:. Login to your insurance member portal online and search for your physical therapy benefits. Call and speak with a customer representative at your insurance company to ask about your physical therapy benefits. There is usually a number for you to call on the back of your insurance card for these types of questions.
Our office is always happy to assist individuals who would like to see one of our physical therapists in determining their physical therapy benefits and eligibility through their insurance. If you would like to work with a specific physical therapist, be sure to find out if that particular physical therapist is in-network or out-of-network with your insurance company as your insurance benefits are likely to be different in that case.
This is a question that is generally specific to your state. As of , all 50 states have some form of direct access for physical therapy. In states that have relatively unrestricted direct access for physical therapy, it means that you are not required to receive a referral from a primary care provider prior to seeing a physical therapist.
In Vermont, we are fortunate to have direct access regulations that are relatively unrestricted for physical therapy — with the exception of Medicare.
In all states, if you are on Medicare, you are required at the federal level to receive a referral from a primary care provider before you can see a physical therapist, and you must renew this referral every 6 months if your physical therapy treatment extends beyond 6 months from your last primary care referral.
If you are a Vermonter with a Vermont insurance company or an out-of-state insurance company with a network in Vermont, such as BlueCross BlueShield, MVP, Cigna, or Medicaid, you are likely to have direct access to physical therapy; and therefore, you are not required to have a referral for physical therapy. There are potential healthcare cost savings when you self-refer to a physical therapy provider. For example, if you are on a high deductible plan, it is likely that you will have a bill from a primary care provider for going to them first for a musculoskeletal issue, in which they would simply refer you to a physical therapist.
Also, a primary care provider may send you to have an MRI, to see a surgeon, or to receive a cortisone shot for temporary pain relief. You may be able to avoid all of those often unnecessary and ineffective healthcare costs by simply seeing a physical therapist first, especially one that focuses on proper movement and treating the problem, not the symptom.
The need for a physical therapy referral is a creature of insurance. If you go to a cash-based physical therapy practice or simply pay out-of-pocket for physical therapy, the requirements of insurance companies to receive reimbursement or to apply your costs to your deductible no longer apply. You might already know this information if you followed the steps above to find out if your insurance covers physical therapy.
But, that information may still not give you a picture of what your bill will actually be if you have a deductible or co-insurance that applies. If you have a simple co-pay for physical therapy services, you now know how much physical therapy will cost you, as co-pays are fixed amounts that you will be responsible for per appointment.
If you have a high deductible plan that applies to physical therapy services, you can expect the full allowable amount for in-network physical therapy providers to be push to you until you have met your deductible for the calendar year. To get a better idea of how much you can expect to pay for a physical therapy appointment with a deductible or co-insurance that applies, it is best if you call the office or practice of the physical therapist you would like to see.
The billing individuals should generally have a good idea what the allowable amounts are for your specific insurance company per the contract that your insurance company has with their practice. If you have a deductible insurance plan, it is possible that you could receive different bills from different physical therapy practices for the same service depending on the differences in how each practice bills your insurance company for the service.
That might sound crazy, but consider this:. And that amount is well above our average for physical therapy visits and is only received in rare cases when a patient is being seen for the first time and has a particularly lengthy initial visit. Good question. But we can speculate several things here.
It very well may be the case that the UVM Medical Center physical therapy department is incredibly more savvy in their billing process than our smaller private practice. As one might expect, bigger hospitals have professional billing personnel on staff, whose sole job is to find ways to maximum each departments profits and minimize expenses. These savvy billing techniques employed by bigger hospitals are likely to draw drastic differences in costs between a private practice and the bigger hospital practice.
If you have a co-insurance BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont plan that applies for physical therapy, you can use these amounts to estimate your expected patient responsibility. At our practice, individuals with a high deductible plan through MVP can expect very straightforward bills. MVP contracted with our practice to establish a maximum allowable amount per appointment.
Aetna does not have a network in Vermont; therefore, all Vermont healthcare providers that you see will be out-of-network, and your out-of-network benefits would apply. At our practice, in general, patients with Medicare and Medicaid can expect the full cost of their approved physical therapy appointments to be covered by their insurance.
In rare cases, a Medicaid insured patient may have a small co-pay for physical therapy, and a Medicare insured patient may be left with a small patient responsibility. In fact, many private physical therapy practices have begun transitioning to cash-based practices, which means that they generally do not accept insurance at all.
Rather, they have the patient pay them directly, and they provide the patient with all the information they may need to submit their appointment charge to their insurance company for potential reimbursement. While our practice accepts insurance, we also have established out-of-pocket fees that patients may elect to pay at their own discretion rather than processing their physical therapy appointments through their insurance company.
In some cases, it makes more sense at our practice for a patient to simply pay out-of-pocket when, for example, it is approaching the end of the calendar year, a patient is out-of-network, and the patient has a high deductible that is not close to being met. Insurance companies are incentivized to maximize profits and minimize payouts, so it is inevitable that insurance denials for physical therapy services happen. The benefit limit is generally a hard limit and cannot be challenged.
There are other reasons for a denial for physical therapy treatment, however. Some insurance companies hire individuals whose sole job is to determine whether or not an individual should receive or continue to receive physical therapy services even when they have not met their benefit limit for the calendar year. This practice acts as a check to verify that the physical therapy treatment you are receiving is medically necessary.
For example, the insurance company, Cigna, exclusively practices this technique to limit physical therapy payouts wherever possible.
After an initial 5 visits with a physical therapist, the therapist must submit a PT re-evaluation to request additional visits beyond the 5 initial visits. If the designated evaluator does not believe you need physical therapy, they will deny the additional visits. If you have not met your calendar year benefit limit but have been denied physical therapy treatment, you could try one of several things to be approved for visits:.
Have your physical therapist challenge the decision. At our practice, we do this automatically. Our therapists would not submit a request for additional visits if they did not think you needed additional visits to resolve pain or an injury. Occasionally, a therapist will be able to speak with an evaluator to explain your situation in more detail, which may help them to understand why more treatment is medically necessary. See your primary care provider for a referral for physical therapy.
A referral from your primary care provider can usually be enough to communicate to a Clinical Quality Evaluator that your physical therapy treatment is medically necessary.
Continue physical therapy and pay out-of-pocket. While not ideal, continuing physical therapy could prevent more expensive healthcare costs, such as surgery or temporary pain relief shots, in the future. This is a decision to be made at your own discretion, and you should step back and consider the whole picture.
If you have met your benefit limit for the year, there is no harm in asking your insurance company if there is any way to receive additional physical therapy treatment in the calendar year. But, in all likeliness, the benefit limit will be a hard limit only in rare cases do insurance companies permit additional visits beyond your benefit limit. Many people who walk into our office think that they can just give us their insurance card, and we will be able to tell them exactly how much they will need to pay for their appointment.
While that may be true for those individuals with co-pays that apply for physical therapy services, it is certainly not true for all. As you might have realized in reading the sections above, insurance complicates the billing process.
While providers can give you their best estimate of your cost based on previous insurance responses, it is ultimately your insurance company that has the final say in how much money a provider will receive for a service based on their mutual contract and how much patient responsibility will be applied to each appointment based on the details of your insurance plan with them. Here is what an overly-simplified insurance billing process looks like for healthcare providers:.
These 6 steps are incredibly over-simplified, and the reality is that the process may not be the same every time due to a multiplicity of reasons that are, frankly, boring and not worth your time.
In some locations, physical therapists are specially trained to be involved in other types of treatment, including:. Physical therapy can help you recover from an injury and avoid future injury. Your physical therapist can help you reduce pain in the soft tissues muscles, tendons, and ligaments , build muscle strength, and improve flexibility, function, and range of motion.
He or she can also evaluate how you do an activity and make suggestions for doing the activity in a way that is less likely to result in an injury. Physical therapy can help you live more easily with chronic or ongoing health conditions such as spinal stenosis , arthritis , and Parkinson's disease.
Your physical therapist will work with you to establish your goals. Then he or she will create a program of educational, range-of-motion, strengthening, and endurance activities to meet your needs. Some conditions involve several body systems and can lead to significant disability. These conditions—such as stroke, spinal cord injury, and major cardiopulmonary heart and lung problems—are usually addressed by a team of health professionals through programs such as cardiac rehab and stroke rehab.
The team can include doctors; nurses; physical, occupational, and speech therapists; psychologists; and social workers, among others. Physical therapists are a critical part of this team. They address the issues of range of motion, strength, endurance, mobility walking, going up and down stairs, getting in and out of a bed or chair , and safety.
The physical therapist may also get you the equipment you need, such as a walker or wheelchair, and make sure you can use the equipment appropriately. Physical therapists also work with children who have major injuries or health conditions, such as cerebral palsy. They address the usual issues of range of motion, strength, endurance, and mobility. Also, the therapist considers the child's special growth and developmental needs.
Treatment is often provided in the school or in a facility just for children. The way physical therapy and other services are delivered in the schools varies among the states. Talk to your child's doctor, school, or your local health department if you think your child may qualify for evaluation or treatment services.
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What does a physical therapist do? What should you look for in a physical therapist? Physical therapists can also specialize in certain types of care, such as: Back and neck pain. Cardiac rehabilitation rehab. Wound care. Cancer-related problems. Treatment of children or older adults.
Here are some questions to think about before you choose a physical therapist: Can your doctor suggest one? Do you need a referral from your doctor? Some states require this. Will your insurance company pay for your physical therapy?
Health Tools Health Tools Health Tools help you make wise health decisions or take action to improve your health. Actionsets are designed to help people take an active role in managing a health condition. Fitness: Increasing Core Stability. Types of Physical Therapy Exercise Physical therapy nearly always involves exercise of some kind that is specifically designed for your injury, illness, condition, or to help prevent future health problems.
Fitness: Increasing Core Stability Manual therapy Manual therapy sometimes called bodywork is a general term for treatment performed mostly with the hands. Manual therapy can include: Massage. Pressure is applied to the soft tissues of the body, such as the muscles. Massage can help relax muscles, increase circulation, and ease pain in the soft tissues. Slow, measured movements are used to twist, pull, or push bones and joints into position.
This can help loosen tight tissues around a joint and help with flexibility and alignment. Pressure is applied to a joint. It can be done with the hands or a special device. The careful, controlled force used on the joint can range from gentle to strong and from slow to rapid. Education Physical therapy almost always includes education and training in areas such as: Performing your daily tasks safely. Protecting your joints and avoiding reinjury.
Using assistive devices such as crutches or wheelchairs. Doing home exercises designed to help with your injury or condition.
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