California Senators Should Vote No on AB 783

SUPPORTING PTs and CALIFORNIA PRIVATE PRACTICE GROUP - WE MUST GET THE FAXES AND CALLS OUT FOR A NO ON AB 783.

Physical Therapy Practices are in Serious Jeopardy!

Private PT Businesses will Shut Down Unless You Act Now!

AB 783 passed through the Assembly.

Next it will go to the Senate Business and Professions Committee.

We MUST stop it there!

Without the proactive actions of our entire profession, the bill to legalize physician owned physical therapy services will go unchallenged, and hundreds of Physical Therapy practices likely will go out of business, putting us and 6,000 of our employees out of work!

Please help by faxing a letter and calling these legislators no later than Monday, June 6th, at the latest. Please don't delay.

Click here to download all the faxes you will need (Flash image)



We did the busy work for you.

Follow these very simple steps.

1. Enter your name and date in the fields at the top.

2. Write your story - Nothing fancy but let him know that Physician Owned Physical Therapy services have cost you money, jobs, and is hurting the profession. Tell a horror story but we need a massive outpouring of stuff coming down on this these 3 senators' heads.

2. Delete Yellow Highlights and Sign the bottom and fill in your address

3. IMPORTANT Print them out on your LETTERHEAD

4. Fax them.

5. Repeat with everyone in your office!

Feel free to customize them as you see fit.

For Phone Calls: Here are the names and phone numbers. If they ask questions, simple state the information that is contained on the fax.

Senator Lou Correa
Phone: (916) 651-4034

Senator Ed Hernandez
Phone: (916) 651-4024
Fax: (916) 445-0485

Senator Mark Wyland
Phone: (916) 651-4038
Fax: (916) 446-7382

For those of you who might feel "weird" about participating in the political process, think about it, this is why we live in America. This is your chance to have your voice be heard. (unless you don't mind working for a physician and believe, like they do, that anyone is qualified to do our job... then you can disregard this message).

Please Don't Delay.

Defeating AB 783 depends on every one of our CA members (and those out of state supporting their colleagues) taking action immediately so our voice can be heard. Our independence and livelihoods depend on it!

If you can donate - we need every penny we can muster.

The California Private Practice Group Board of Directors

PS: check www.StopPOPTs.org for regular updates

Follow us on www.twitter.com/StopPOPTs

**The California Private Practice Group is a special interest group of the California Physical Therapy Association.**

Is Physical Therapy in California a Zero Sum Game?

Is physical therapy in California a zero sum game?

Will all patients, providers and payers rise together or will we all fall together?

By definition, zero sum situations are conflict situations where winners' gains are offset by losers' losses.

Conflict is the case in California where physicians and podiatrists are in a fight with physical therapists and the public.

The physicians are trying to earn kickbacks on referrals to physical therapy services they own.

The California Physical Therapy Association (CPTA) is fighting the profit-oriented physicians with a website called Stop POPTS

The physicians are supporting a bill sponsored by Assembly Member Mary Hayashi (D - Hayward), called AB 783 which...

...would legalize the employment of physical therapists by physicians and podiatrists in their professional corporations by adding physical therapists to the list of healing arts practitioners who may be "shareholders, officers, directors, or professional employees of a medical corporation or a podiatric medical corporation."

The American Physical Therapy Association has the position that professionals supervising other professionals is poor public policy since many studies have demonstrated increased costs under the self-referral model.

Here is a members-only APTA white paper from 2005 discussing the anti-POPTS policy.

Here you can hear California Senator Aanested, an oral surgeon, calling the doctors' professional association "disingenuous" for lobbying to include physical therapists as physician employees.

The Office of the Inspector General determined in 2010 that 91% of the services billed in physicians' offices were improperly documented.

Both sides claim superior outcomes but little published evidence supports physical therapy outcomes in either setting.

The California Assembly-person sponsoring AB 783 is, in turn, sponsored by the California Medical Association (CMA).

The CMA donated $22,608 to Assembly member Mary Hayashi in 2010.

Healthcare reform will be difficult for all parties but physical therapists and physicians can maintain professional integrity by focusing on patient care first and by avoiding situations where conflicts between care and profit may confuse professional decision making.

In situation like AB 783, where the two sides vehemently disagree on policy, physicians have the obligation to avoid these business arrangements rather than seek them out.

Putting patients first can keep health care from becoming a zero sum game.

You can support the California Physical Therapy Association by signing this petition against POPTS.

Stop POPTS twitter page is here.