Fighting Sickness with Fitness
Before you go thinking this is just another COVID-19 conversation, we need to step back a second. When referencing sickness, I want you to consider this as an umbrella term touching on commonly known sicknesses such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease to just name a few. To add to that umbrella, I now want you to also consider low back pain, depression, and osteoporosis. The impact these all have on the human body are just as important to consider as the systemic items I mentioned previously in regards to our topic today. The value fitness can provide towards attacking and minimizing sickness is something I believe needs to be further instilled in our conservative healthcare as a mechanism to ‘fight back.’
As a profession, physical therapy is historically not reimbursed for ‘maintenance’ or ‘preventative’ healthcare. Federal and private payers have long had their strangle hold on this realm of service as to minimize their overall dollar paid. The question I believe many providers AND recipients of care should be asking is… WHY???
The research has now become more robust on showing the healthcare costs saved when we utilize physical therapy as the main choice for early intervention in musculoskeletal pain. Patients show improved levels of pain, less fear avoidance, less use of opioids, and less healthcare money spent on unnecessary imaging. Now this technically isn’t preventative or maintenance care because it is reactionary after a bout of musculoskeletal pain, but can we apply the same mindset to preventative care? If getting physical therapy first after pain can save money for consumers and insurance companies from a reactionary standpoint, can we save even MORE if we allocate focus on preventative measures? Certainly a topic I think is worth thinking about!
So how can we make an impact on this from an individual level and scale to the community and ideally further? As a physical therapist, I use the skill of educating my clients on the many health benefits “playing offense” (a term I originally heard from the group Institute of Clinical Excellence) will do for their overall ‘sickness’ improvements but also for their pocket book. It is hard for many of us to look past our current lifestyle, but the possible outcome of 5, 10, and 20 years of preventative work can possibly save thousands of dollars of future reactive care. No, I am not implying insurance payers should be responsible for 20 years of preventative medicine in the form of physical therapy. I believe that specific investment should come from the individual wanting to play with their grandkids and great grandkids and knowing the benefit of starting now to reap the benefits down the road. I DO however support the thought that these individuals could use guidance from a healthcare professional on the front end to appropriately understand the multiple factors associated with what goes into the process of preventative care. Will this ever be a covered service from insurance payers? Time will tell, but this is where longevity (health and dollar) should be considered. How much time and money could be saved by all parties if we put more emphasis on fighting sickness from a preventative rather than reactionary measure? I personally believe a lot.
A strong part of preventative care that I can speak most directly to is the robustness or robust potential of the human body. The human body is resilient and adaptable, and we owe it to ourselves to build our bodies up. Research continues to support moderate to high level intensity movement for improvements in cardiorespiratory and musculoskeletal health. Not only that, but research ALSO supports prescription exercise as therapy for numerous chronic diagnoses (including but not limited to anxiety, depression, cancer, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and more). If exercise can make such a strong impact on so many avenues of health, why aren’t we investing more in fitness and preventative measures? This isn’t just investing from an individual level but more importantly from an organizational level. We as consumers need to be advocates and push the payers (insurance companies) to understand that supporting their customers fitness will be to their organizations best benefit as well. How can we change this? Let’s keep proving it to them. Keep fighting sickness with fitness, and keep talking about it. The more you can stay out of the larger medical system, the bigger your individual impact will continue to be! Hold up your end of the bargain and I believe we have a strong chance of making change.
Until next time,
