Lessons From the 2023 APTA PPS Conference

It was a privilege to speak with dozens of Physical Therapy clinic owners and industry leaders at the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) PPS conference in Austin. We discussed the current financial landscape in physical therapy, and the promise of AI technologies like Tapt Health.

After a few days of reflection, I’ve distilled these conversations into three major themes:

1) Reimbursements are dropping and payer audits are increasing. It is imperative that CPT coding of visits is fully reflective of all treatments. At the same time, it’s critical to stay compliant with payer coding rules. Given these incentives, clinic owners remain focused on adopting technologies that improve provider utilization and ensure compliance.

2) Industry insiders are talking up AI, but clinician tech adoption can only take off once more tools integrate into existing EMR workflows. Further PT EMR tech integrations should unlock provider productivity improvements in the next one to two years. I project AI tech will have a major impact on provider burnout and a moderate impact on provider utilization.

3) Fee for service physical therapy is inherently broken, but insiders can only speculate on the value based care future. Dropping reimbursements will eventually fall below rising overhead costs. The only way to improve productivity is to work longer hours (time based coding). As a result, most technical innovation is focused on optimizing documentation efficiency around the EMR. My hope is that moving to a value based care model will enable providers and technologists to re-focus on meaningful clinical care innovation. In this model, PTs should be financially incentivized to provide care that reduces downstream MSK spend.