Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. My name is Joe King. I'm the owner of Physical Therapy Advantage in North Aurora. I want to talk to you today about direct access for physical therapy services here in the state of Illinois. Still getting questions from people all the time, they're asking me, do I need a prescription to come to therapy? Do I need to go see my doctor before I come to therapy? Should I do that? Should I not do that? So just to let everybody know, I feel it's my obligation, my duty, responsibility, to let people know as a physical therapist and an owner of a clinic here in the Fox Valley region is that back in August of 2018, the governor signed legislation that allowed physical therapists in the state of Illinois to treat without a doctor's prescription or referral.

So it's been, not say a game changer, but definitely a big boost for the general public. It's been a big boost for physical therapy, for sure, but a big boost for the general public, because now you as a client have the choice to go see a physical therapist right away after an injury. You do not have to go see your primary physician and be referred to your Orthopedic Doctor and then go get x-rays and then go get MRI, and then finally, maybe three or four weeks later start physical therapy. Where if you get hurt. On a Monday, whether it be getting hurt at work and or outside doing yard work or playing a volleyball game with your family or whatever, you can go see a physical therapist on Tuesday right away which is fantastic. So it decreases the amount of time that it takes for you to see us. So decreased amount of days off of work potentially decreases the amount of opioid use, which is huge right now. It decreases the costs for you. It decreases the backlog of clients going into seeing the doctor at this point in time too, so there's a win-win situation all the way around. 

So just to let you know, in the state of Illinois that you do not need a doctor's prescription or a physician referral to start physical therapy services, you just have to call up the clinic and you can say, hey, I hurt my ankle and I'd like to get it looked at. I hurt it yesterday, or I hurt it the day before. And they'll say, have you seen a doctor? And you'll say no, and they'll say that's okay because we will send an evaluation summary to the doctor to let them know that you've started therapy, and these are our findings, and this is our proposed plan of care, so we will contact a physician for you at that point in time and move forward with the best plan of care. And hopefully by the time, if you do have to see the physician, you're well on your way to recovery, you're feeling much better, you haven't missed so many days of work, and it's just, like I said, a win-win situation.

So if you have questions about this, you can definitely call our clinic at (630) 892-8003. I'll put some information below as well, a link to all this stuff so that you can basically have access and have this information ready to go if you happen to need it. Or if anybody that you know; would be a friend, family, or coworker, that may also need it so you can pass it along. Thank you very much and we look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly up of Joe. Bye.