“When a family member or a friend suffers a debilitating injury or disease – the road to recovery almost always includes physical therapy.  Whether it is regaining mobility, rebuilding strength or recovering flexibility, our physical therapists have the job of getting our bodies and our lives back to normal. 

 

Seeing a physical therapist in rural America, however, can pose a real hardship.  Even though there are more than 200,000 licensed physical therapists in the nation, finding one in a nearby town or county can be difficult.  Even more difficult is our job of keeping the physical therapist in practice here, with the salary and benefits they deserve.  Of the 4,368 physical therapists licensed to practice in Missouri, 3,319 actually reside here because many are mobile, splitting their time between locations in more than one
state.

 

With this difficulty in mind, I visited the Kenny Rogers Children’s Center in Sikeston last month.  The Center is a lynchpin in our system to provide all kinds of specialized medial care to area children.  It is also one of our region’s most important health care facilities which employs physical therapists.  They are charged with our littlest patients – in particular – those who are fighting cerebral palsy.  An encouraging, smiling physical therapist is just as important a part of their mental day as it is a part of their physical day.

 

Like many of our rural health care clinics and hospitals, however, the shortages of physical therapists, nurses, expert technicians and assistants are real threats to the quality of care in Southern Missouri.

 

So I left home for Washington determined to find a way to alleviate this problem, and I think I have discovered one.

 

The National Health Service Corps is a government program designed to provide an extra benefit to rural health care providers in the form of grants that can be used to help pay off student loans.  For registered nurses, medical technicians, nurse midwives, dentists and other medical personnel who start out their careers with a significant student loan debt and choose to practice in underserved areas, the National Health Service Corps helps pay the costs of their education.

 

The proposal I put together simply adds physical therapists, who also incur the cost of an expensive graduate education, to the list of eligible practitioners. 

 

“It takes years of education, including graduate or doctoral education, to become a physical therapist. This leaves many students starting off their careers with a high amount of debt,” said American Physical Therapy Association President Ben F. Massey, Jr.  They believe this new bill would help alleviate some of that burden and encourage more physical therapists to serve in areas that need them the most.

 

The response to the bill has been very strong.  Within just days, even hours, 40 other members of Congress had agreed to support this bill.  The American Physical Therapy Association immediately lent its support and pledged to make the bill a legislative priority when their members meet with members of Congress this summer.  It is an issue that bridges party lines and draws support from liberal, conservative, urban and rural representatives. 

 

It is also an issue that demonstrates how important it is that we look for every conceivable opportunity to improve the quality of health care in underserved, rural areas.  We can purchase the machines to undertake just about any procedure known to the medical world, but if we do not have the skilled men and women to operate it, maintain it, and properly counsel the patient, it is just a worthless hunk of metal. 

 

It is the people who matter most to the success of health care in rural America – the people you meet on the road to recovery.”