Clinicians Blog

If you are treating workers compensation patients and performing Functional Capacity Evaluations, offering impairment ratings is a relatively easy way to expand your clinical services and increase your value to referral sources.

What is an impairment rating? In a nutshell, it is an evaluation performed on a patient to assign a percent of impairment. These impairment percentages are used in settling workers’ compensation cases. The American Medical Association (AMA) has developed a very prescribed methodology for performing impairment ratings. This methodology is published in The AMA’s Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment . The “AMA Guide” covers the process of determining impairment in all the systems of the body. However, the sections on musculoskeletal and neurological impairments are the sections most relevant to physical and occupational therapists. The typical extremity musculoskeletal impairment involves taking goniometric range of motion measures and then using tables and graphs in the “AMA Guide” to determine the percent impairment.

Communication is the Key

When marketing to workers comp adjusters and case managers, your best marketing tools are your skills as a therapist and understanding how to communicate with these individuals. These “tools” will allow adjustors and case managers to develop trust in your skills as a therapist and are more likely to send patients. This type of marketing is not pounding the pavement, it is relationship building. To do this effectively you must understand the roles of the adjustor and case manager.

When an employee is injured on the job a therapist may be recruited to help with treatment and rehabilitation. Understanding the role of the each individual person involved in the case is crucial. In these workers’ compensation cases, the therapists spend a majority of time with the patient throughout their rehabilitation and communication with the insurance adjuster, and sometimes depending on the severity of the case, a case manager. These two roles are inter related and can be marketed to similarly.

The whole area of work related injury prevention and industrial rehab requires a very different approach to marketing. Some clinics struggle to figure out how to do this kind of marketing. The next series of blogs is geared towards this topic and helping therapists understand how to accomplish smart marketing in this area. The posts will address identifying the buyers and their needs and interests, understanding how to do market research, how to reach the buyer, how to make a sales call, and how to track the outcome of your marketing program.