Deans' stroke musings: Have You Told Congress to Stop the Therapy Caps Yet?

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Have You Told Congress to Stop the Therapy Caps Yet?

More proof that the NSA hasn't figured out yet that the therapy silo is not where the focus needs to be. The stupidity continues,if you want less disabled survivors you stop the neuronal cascade of death in the first week. These 177 possibilities need research. If they really want to help existing survivors they would sponsor research that finds out how to make neuroplasticity easily and consistently repeatable.GAH, more proof that 2 functioning brain cells do not exist there.
Todays email.

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Dear dean,

We’ll give it to you straight. If you haven’t had a chance to tell Congress that access to outpatient physical, occupational and speech therapy services must be maintained for stroke survivors on Medicare, do it soon before it’s too late!

On Jan. 1, 2014, Medicare will cap, or limit, outpatient therapy services to a certain dollar amount each year, even if the patient needs more care. Today, a process exists for stroke survivors to get more therapy services than the caps allow. This “exceptions process” lets healthcare providers and stroke survivors decide on a treatment plan that makes sense for the survivor’s recovery, not just Medicare’s financial bottom line. However, the exceptions process is scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Only Congress can prevent that from happening. Congress has five weeks to take action and extend the exceptions process beyond 2013.

Five weeks seems like a long time. Maybe you haven’t taken action on this issue yet because you’re thinking “oh, this can wait.” But it can’t. Many organizations and individuals are asking Congress to take action on their issues in the short time Congress has left to work in 2013. The stroke community must make its voice heard on the Medicare therapy caps issue to ensure that it gets on Congress’ list of “to do’s” this year.

We’ve made contacting them easy. We’ve drafted a message that you can personalize and send to your members of Congress.

Five minutes of your time could help stroke survivors across the country who need more therapy than the caps allow to recover to their fullest potential. Join us and make a difference today!

Sincerely,
signed by Coral Cosway