| Administrator's Report 2 |
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| Written by Bev Greer |
| Sunday, 27 September 2009 16:00 |
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It's almost overwhelming complexity leaves most of us scratching our heads. When we look at the some of the proposed solutions to healthcare costs and access the area of primary concern to us here at the Stroke Recovery Center is long term care provisions for continued rehabilitation for stroke survivors. There is talk of prevention, reducing costs, changing reimbursement incentives and extending insurance coverage to the uninsured, but sadly lacking at the current time, is any serious discussion of long term care and/or chronic care management and reimbursement. As we well know, current MediCare reimbursement for out-patient rehabilitation and speech therapies is limited to a very short time frame in the continuum of recovering from a stroke. We see improvement in terms of years rather than months and the ability to continue rehabilitation has proven results over the years here at the Stroke Recovery Center. The benefits of socialization and the mental health aspect of recovery has not been recognized as reimbursable nor has any of the forms of therapeutic recreation that have proven benefits in promoting the maximum feasible functionality on the road to recovery. At the Stroke Recovery Center we have proven over the years that improvement can continue as the year's progress and that improvement can be obtained in a community setting at a relatively low cost. We understand and support the concept that is being considered as part of the reform package that there should be evidence based medicine justification for reimbursable programs and that this should start with MediCare and will continue to press for inclusion in the discussions at the local, state and federal levels to bring the argument for long term benefits and services to be available to stroke survivors and their families throughout the country. It is our vision to see Stroke Recovery Centers available either in person or on-line to a large portion of the estimated 4-5 million persons in the United States who have had a stroke and have few or not options to continue getting better. Contact me with your story at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Together we can make change. |
| Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 September 2009 12:36 |
The debate over healthcare reform continues.