If You Like a Good Bargain, You’re Going to LOVE Physical Therapy.
It’s no secret that prices have been going up. Gas is expensive. Food is expensive. The housing market is crazy. If you’re looking for ways to pinch some pennies or stretch your dollars, physical therapy might be just what you’re looking for. Physical therapy saves cost. A study that looked at the claims data of 472,000 Medicare beneficiaries with back pain found that when PT was the first treatment, costs were 19% lower than when people got injections first and 75% lower
than for people who were sent straight to surgery. The study also found that in the year following diagnosis, people who got PT first had costs 18% lower than those who got injections, and 54% lower than those in the surgery group. Another study was conducted in 2006 by Virginia Mason Health Center in Seattle along with Aetna and Starbucks. They sent workers with back pain to see both a physical therapist and a physician for their first treatment. Use of MRI dropped by one-third, people got better faster, missed less work, and were more satisfied with their care. The cost savings was so great that Virgina Mason was losing money on treating back pain, so Aetna ended up paying them more for PT treatments because they were saving so much money. Physical therapy first means fewer visits. A paper published in Physical Therapy looked at outcomes when patients went to a PT first versus seeing a physician first for back pain. It found that patients who went to their physician first needed 33 PT visits on average, while those who went to their PT first only needed 20. Seeing a PT first saves money, but it also saves time.
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