Session provided by Mary Ann Keogh Hoss, Ph.D, CTRS, FACHE,
FDRT at the American Therapeutic Recreation Association’s 2014 Mid-Year
Conference in Rockville, Maryland.
Date: Sunday, March 9, 2014
Mary Ann Keogh-Hoss presented some interesting trends in our
field based on the U.S. Dept. of Labor.
The number of people employed in our field has been
decreasing during the last decade (2003 to 2013).
The hourly/ annual wage for people employed in our field has
been increasing during the last decade (2003 to 2013).
Where are we employed?
# 1: Nursing homes (may not have Certified Therapeutic
Recreation Specialist credentials).
# 2: Hospitals (general)
# 3: Psychiatric hospitals
The top paying states for our profession include:
District of Columbia, California, and Connecticut.
The highest concentration of workers included:
New York, Pennsylvania, and California.
The cost for care keeps rising. The Affordable Care Act is
to cap growth on spending.
There was a decrease in inpatient services and an increase
in managed care from 2006 to 2012.
The big three include: Access, Cost, and Quality
There is a triple aim that consists of: health of the population,
experience of the care, and the per capita cost.
Questions to consider:
What do we (Recreational Therapists) offer (at a local
level)?
What services can we provide?
How can we, RTs, help to lower the cost?
Do patients/ clients leave the hospital sooner?
Do they stay
out of hospital longer?
How do we measure service in our field?
Healthy Outcomes
Disease Burdens
Here is a good question to ask:
Who gets the job done to get
the person functioning at the least cost? It doesn’t matter the discipline.
Basically, we want to work ourselves out of a job. If people
are not sick, we don’t get paid. We in RT are also very focused on health,
wellness, and the preventative process.
Our services are patient-centered. We ask: what does the
patient need? What is it that we (RTs) can do to help decrease cost and
increase saving? How do we keep people out of the hospital?
We RTs work in both the clinical setting (hospital) and the
community setting.
We, RTs are beyond “feel good activities” or “quality of
life.” Of course, I [Danny Pettry] argue that both of those are very good
things. However, in a world of expensive care, it is about functioning. People
go to hospitals (in example: rehabilitation) to re-gain functioning in order to
be as independent as possible. The cost is expensive. In order to provide affordable care, we must we must provide services that are grounded in research t
that proves outcomes.
I [Danny Pettry] am not an expert on the Affordable Care
Act. I am aware that there are several areas, which Recreational Therapists are
a good fit to provide services. I recommend being a member of the American
Therapeutic Recreation Association (ATRA) and read materials provided by the
public policy team.
