Hi All
I appreciate all of the positive comments that I received on this subject.
One was from C. Michael Schuch, C.P.O., F.I.S.P.O., F.A.A.O.P.
president-elect, AOPA, the point of it was that You can thank the efforts of
AOPA for this very lucky situation. Well I don’t totally agreed, there is
the Big AMA, and the massive APTA that has more money, more voting members,
and they still don’t get there way. Why Us? My Opinion, is that we do have
something worth while to give the medical consumers. The next reason is that
we save health cost dollars, in almost every respect. That is where our
focus should be.
Nowadays I don’t let a PT or Dr. get away with “oh, this small piece of
plastic cost 400.00”, I now give them these tales. A spousal call to 911
after a fall, pt being taken an ambulance to the ER and nothing is WRONG.
This scenario at least in CA will cost minimal of twice the amount of the
AFO, just stopping this once saves more than the cost of the AFO. My other
tale is a OandP takeoff of a John Hopkins 1989 Hip Fx study, had 300,000 hip
Fx from falls in one year, at an average cost of 35.000.00 each. Breaking
down the study from the view point of OandP, 40% intrinsic and 60%
extrinsic, in my opinion 20% of the extrinsic would benefit from an AFO.
With a 50% failure rate of the AFOs in one year. The savings where very
close to 1 billion dollars in one year. More than the total of what Medicare
paid for all of OandP services in that year.
If we can learn to do more along these ideas then we will be even stronger.
In my opinion our main goal is to get all practitioners up to the challenge
of improving our delivery systems. Practitioners looking at how they do
things, with the goal of reducing the cost for the health delivery
community, getting the health delivery community to see the benefits of
safety as a goal for an AFO.
My last point is, in a time when everyone else is changing the rules for us,
my survival will depend on me to changing my rules. This doesn’t mean being
cheap, but being smarter.
John G. Russell Jr.
3161 Putnam Blvd.
Pleasant Hill, CA. 94523
Phone 510-943-1119
Fax 510-943-24-93
