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The problem with the way occupational therapists address mental health issues
This report also states that mental health expenditures may not be keeping pace with the growth of health care spending in general, and that proportionally there has been a shift over time where more money is being spent on pharmaceuticals and less is being spent on inpatient care.  As a final point,"Three out of every ten dollars spent on MH treatment are expected to go for retail purchases of prescription drugs in 2014, up from 23 percent in 2003. Specialty and general hospitals are forecasted to account for 22 percent of total MH expenditures (down from 28 percent in 2003), physicians and other...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - April 26, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: OT Education OT practice school-based practice Source Type: blogs

Update on early intervention coding and paraprofessional service delivery
Two years ago I blogged about NYS Department of Health emails that instructed the field in use of Level II HCPCS codes.  At that time I stated:  Promoting use of Level II HCPCS codes can only mean they are incredibly misinformed and clueless OR they are throwing in the towel with trying to get reimbursement and they intend on replacing skilled services with services provided by non-licensed people with 'generic' developmental training.It seems that we have received an answer in the form of a final response to a systems complaint initiated against the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on the topic of...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - April 3, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: health insurance Source Type: blogs

Using celebrities to promote occupational therapy - 100 years ago?
According to Bill de Lancey (1958), a writer for the Geneva Times, "Mr. Barton was born in Boston, of a family steeped in the arts and letters."  Occupational therapists know that Barton was an architect and that he was an important Founder of the profession, but few know about the depth of his other talents and interests.During the early 1900s, while he was encouraging Emily Post's literary career and while he was becoming more established in his own architectural practice, Barton also collaborated with others on musical and literary projects.Isabel Barton (George's wife), wrote an AJOT article in 1968 that briefly m...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - March 26, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

Assistance requested with reading Emily Post inscription
Emily Post continued her literary career and in 1910 An Eagle's Feather was published.  Apparently, she was still in contact with George E. Barton.  Here is a copy of the inscription to him in this book:I am having a little difficulty with reading the print - it seems that Emily Post is stating her dissatisfaction with something - I was assuming it might be with the cover picture?  If anyone has any good guesses on what she was referring to I would love to hear opinions.Whenever I can't read someone's writing I am always surprised to find out how it was so apparent to someone else - and then in looking at it...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - March 24, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

Whitewashing the status of the NYS Early Intervention Program
In response to questions by members of the Legislature as part of the February 3, 2014 Joint Budget Hearing on the 2014‐15 Executive Budget for Health/Medicaid, the New York State Department of Health Early Intervention Program provided a progress report with the transition to the State fiscal agent.No one stopped to think that self-assessment for progress reporting might not be the most accurate measure. Perhaps the most shocking misrepresentation in the report was regarding timeliness of payment.  They report that 2013 fourth quarter mean time to payment was 14 days following claim submission.  As a mean...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - March 6, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: health insurance policy Source Type: blogs

More research on effects of weighted vests on attending behaviors.
I was very happy to see another article on weighted vests in the current issue of AJOT (Lin, Lee, Chang, and Hong, 2014).  The last opportunity we had to look at this issue was the excellent pilot study completed by Collins and Dworkin and published in the November/December 2011 AJOT.  In that study (reviewed here) the authors found that the weighted vests were not effective in increasing time on task, but cautioned that the results should be generalized cautiously owing to the small sample size and participant selection process.The current study, completed by colleagues in Taiwan, employed a much more rigorous r...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - March 1, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: evidence-based practice OT practice school-based practice Source Type: blogs

How George Barton helped to launch the literary career of Emily Post
When you say the name “Emily Post” most people automatically think of her contributions as ‘Miss Manners.’ Although they were actually very close in age, it is probably a forgotten fact that George Edward Barton acted as her “Godfather” and editor who helped to launch her literary career.A very reasonable question is “How was George Barton associated with Emily Post?” In 1889 Emily Price (Post) was a debutante and her arrival on the social scene is well documented in various New York newspapers of the day as well as summarized quite thoroughly by Claridge (2008). At about the same time, George Barton was...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - February 13, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

The energy that sparked a profession
O'Brien smiled faintly. "You are no metaphysician, Winston," he said. "Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?" "No." "Then where does the past exist, if at all?" "In records. It is written down." "In records. And- ?" "In the mind. In human memories." (Orwell, p. 205).One telling of the history of the American Occupational Therapy Association is captured in Virginia Quiroga's book "Occupational Therapy: The First Thirty Y...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - February 13, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

On distilling a three year professional debate into a children's video
I was recently asked by a colleague unfamiliar with the debate to summarize in very short form why I am so interested in the social justice issue that is  being discussed on the OT Connections forums.  After three years of debate where issues are framed and re-framed and analyzed and dissected from endless perspectives I sometimes feel overwhelmed when trying to find a basic way to explain the issues.Fairy tales are a form of folklore and are generally constructed in a way that transmit a culture's prevailing beliefs and values.  Of course the challenge in undertaking a narrative analysis of any folk story i...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - February 7, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: OT practice philosophy Source Type: blogs

Narrative re-telling of George Barton's social standing.
An important and perhaps relatively unknown historical analysis of occupational therapy was completed by Ralph Adams as part of his M.S. in Occupational Therapy at Rush University.  His work is entitled The Emmanuel Movement: An Antecedent to Occupational Therapy.  I will be spending quite a bit of time exploring Adams' work in future posts, but his introductory comments about the founding meeting in Clifton Springs on March 15, 1917 are very important for us to consider.  He states, "...[I]n its historical investigation, the profession has not been as concerned with what brought us to that point as with wha...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - February 3, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

The Blue Blood of George Barton: An Introduction
My next several posts will cover the issue of social class and Gilded Age Society.  I am hopeful that these posts will provide a rich background to help in more fully understanding George Barton's interests and interactions regarding occupational therapy.  Introducing the concept in short form is intended to set the stage for the next several posts.I previously wrote about the early life experience of George Barton and how his father was a banker and that he was raised among the social elites in Boston.  We know that he traveled to England and was trained under William Morris - certainly not an experience th...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - January 30, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs

An analysis of the American Occupational Therapy Association's narrative on sensory integration
New day.  New information.  Same narrative.The January 20, 2014 OT Practice publication has a brief article under the 'Industry News' section on page 2.  The article is entitled Study Finds SI Improves Function in Children With Autism and it links to the recent Schaaf, et al (2013) article that I posted about two months ago.What has happened in the last two months?  Well, there was a lot of social media conversation about that article.  On December 4th Diana Henry posted a link to the article on the OT Connections site and entitled her message thread "OT/SI: Finally recognized for treating autism!"...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - January 25, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: evidence-based practice sensory integration Source Type: blogs

Governor Andrew Cuomo's infamous legacy with the New York State Early Intervention Program
The New York State Association of County Health Officials (NYSACHO) finds itself in an awkward position these days.  As a primer, you should be aware that County Health Officials are charged with administrating the Early Intervention Program in their respective jurisdictions.  They hire Early Intervention Officials and are responsible for directing the implementation of the programs.In bygone days, the mechanisms in place for funding the Early Intervention Program were 'pay then chase' methods.  In simple terms, the County would pay the provider to see the child  for services and then the County would b...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - January 17, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: health insurance Source Type: blogs

Things Jeremy wanted me to remember.
“You know this sucks,” Jeremy scowled. “You know it, and I know that you know it.”At first I wasn’t sure if this was intended to bridge some gap between us, or if I was just a convenient target for some anger. I was only a couple years older than Jeremy and still trying to understand what it meant to be an occupational therapist. I barely had the corners of my own life tucked in properly, and here I was needing to find some headspace to help Jeremy. Every day he made it a point to tell me that his life sucked, and that I knew it more than anyone else.Jeremy had been riding dirt bikes since he was 5 years ...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - January 13, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: OT practice OT stories Source Type: blogs

The architectural legacy of George Barton
n.b. ongoing series related to a study of George Barton, founder of the Occupational Therapy Profession. George Barton was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1901 (Reed and Sanderson, 1999) and he traveled to Colorado some time after that.  I could not confirm the exact dates of his travel but an educated guess would be sometime around 1907, because his architecture practice with Sturgis was listed as  being active up until that approximate time (AIA, 1914).It is difficult to know exactly what brought George Barton to Colorado - it could have been his own "chase" for a tuberculosis cure or it could have b...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - December 29, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: history Source Type: blogs