Direct Access; What is it? And how does it affect me?

Navigating through your healthcare options can be difficult. The path to treatment and recovery is rarely direct and usually involves a lot of obstacles, round-about pathways, and unnecessary stress. This is where Direct Access comes in (at least for your physical therapy care!)

On a very basic level — Direct Access allows physical therapists to treat patients without a doctor’s prescription. There are many different levels of Direct Access across the United States, and you can read more about your specific state below.* The benefits for this are; 1. You can get your treatment a lot faster, and 2. The costs of your healthcare go down; you don’t have to spend time and money seeing your doctor to get a prescription in order to begin your physical therapy treatment.

*For more detailed information on Direct Access visit http://www.apta.org/StateIssues/DirectAccess/ and http://www.apta.org/FederalIssues/DirectAccess/

Direct Access was implemented in all 50 states as of January 2015 although many people (including those in the health and wellness community) still do not utilize it or know what it is. Most people visit a doctor to confirm that they need to see a physical therapist. They end up waiting for an unnecessary doctor appointment just to obtain a referral to physical therapy. This is no longer necessary with Direct access. This process can take days or even weeks — which means you’re most likely making your injury worse and increasing your pain. Using the betterPT app, you can now directly search, book, and manage your PT sessions without waiting for a Doctor. Your treatment can start the same day as your pain so your day-to-day activities can go back to normal as soon as possible.

So far, the Direct Access movement has been slowly pushing forward. Not all clinics, doctors, or patients are aware that it exists. You can help change that by educating your friends and family with this knowledge so that Direct Access becomes common knowledge!

Our goal at betterPT is to empower you to make the best healthcare decisions when it comes to physical therapy and to speed up your recovery process. Feel free to share this link — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb4XvTgilGg and follow our blog to get more information on the most important updates in the health, wellness, and physical therapy industries!