Group,

This CMS "incident to" proposal has been an irritation of mine for a
while and the reason for my irritation stems from a the following.

A little over a year one of our local PT clinics pulled it's ATCs from
providing "incident to" therapy to Medicare patients resulting in the
ATCs seeing their clinical responsibilities cut back. The clinic did
however offer to send the ATCs for "additional education &
credentialling" which would allow them to return to providing service to
this population. This "additional education" was a PTA program via
distance learning. To me this is one of the most telling tales about how
far we have yet to go in not only educating the public about our
educational preparation and training, but we have to continually fight
to educate many of those we think understand the athletic training
professional already.

I guess to bottomline this point I would say don't assume this will go
away because CMS will understand the certified athletic trainer's
competency-based educational background, training and continuing
education requirements. This is very really and may soon have widespread
implications on the growth of our profession.


Mitch Doyle, MA, LAT, ATC
Program Director, Assistant Professor
Athletic Training Education Program
Coe College
1220 1st Ave. NE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402
319.399.8653 office
mdoyle@...

"Opportunities are never lost, someone took the ones you missed."