The Federal Government, Department of Health and Private Health Insurers have recently made the decision to change the funding of certain treatments. These include Naturopathy, Homeopathy and there has also been discussion about Clinical Exercise.
Clinical Exercise is a very broad term for certain exercises that is unfortunately not well regulated. Whilst there has been a decision to remove Clinical Exercise from health insurance funding, the Department of Health considers that an insurer may lawfully pay benefits if a physiotherapist (or excercise physiologist), providing services to a patient within the accepted scope of clinical practice, uses exercises or techniques drawn from Clinical Exercise as part of that patient’s treatment as long as the exercises or techniques are within the accepted scope of clinical practice.
The good news is that our classes are Physiotherapy based and focus on a tailored program for individual impairments, goals and treatment therefore will continue to be eligible for rebates!
In order to continue to receive the rebate your physiotherapist will ensure that you have undertaken a thorough assessment, have set outcome measures, and are prescribed an individual exercise program tailored to your requirements in order to help you achieve your set goals.
So - from the inside, not much is changing as we have always been conducting sessions without our scope of practice and within the guidelines and laws set. The only change will be to the name of the classes - from April 1st, our Clinical Exercise sessions will be known as Clinical Exercise which is our way of distinguishing between our unique clinical service offering and traditional Clinical Exercise.
Overall, we see this as a great opportunity to ensure all clients doing classes with us are working towards their personal goals.
If you have any questions relating to the changes, please contact the practice directly on 9580 1985 or b.mason@backinmotion.com.au