Here is an update for those of you who are watching the Texas Legislature along with us this session. We’ve been specifically tracking House Bill 29 and Senate Bill 732 – both of which would enable easier access to physical therapists via removal of the requirement to obtain a referral prior to receiving PT treatment. Since our last newsletter, both bills have been referred to Committee – to the Public Health committee on the House side and to the Business and Commerce committee in the Senate. As of this writing, neither bill has yet been scheduled to be heard by the committee members, but we are hopeful that this will be happening soon.
One of the legislators on the House Public Health committee, Representative Garnet Coleman (District 147 in the Houston area) is an official HB29 co-sponsor. Thanks, Representative Coleman – we appreciate your support! The other Public Health committee members are Representative Steve Allison (District 121 in North San Antonio), Representative Four Price (District 87 in Amarillo), Representative J.D. Sheffield (District 59 in Gatesville), and Representative Lina Ortega (District 77 in El Paso). It is likely that the House Committee will hear discussion regarding HB29 soon, as there is considerable legislator support for the measure. NOW is a good time to reach out to these legislators – particularly if you are one of their voting constituents – to let them know that you support the bill. Sharing our individual personal stories about why easier access to physical therapy would be of benefit to our selves or our family members can help to garner their support. If you are not a constituent of one of these members, perhaps you know someone who is. If so, we encourage you to network with them. You are welcome to share any information that Symmetry has provided about the benefits of physical therapy and to easy access to primary musculoskeletal health care. (Please see the links below for references to pertinent information.)
Thank-you to those of you who have already shared your communications with your elected representatives and with us at Symmetry! It means a lot to us that our patients are willing to get involved in this process that would help us to help you to stay optimally physically healthy. Speaking with your individual House and Senate representatives and encouraging them to support HB 29 and SB 732 by becoming co-sponsors and by encouraging discussion of these measures in Committee is a great help. (Want to know who your specific representatives are? Find out by visiting this link.)
We are also hopeful that the Senate Business and Commerce committee will schedule a hearing for SB732 over the next several weeks. If you are on a letter-writing roll, here are the members of the Senate committee: Senator Kelly Hancock (District 9 in North Richland Hills), Senator Robert Nichols (District 3 in Jacksonville), Senator Donna Campbell (District 25 in New Braunfels), Senator Brandon Creighton (District 4 in Beaumont), Senator Jose Menendez (District 29 in San Antonio), Senator Angela Paxton (District 8 in McKinney), Senator Charles Schwertner (District 5 in Bryan / Georgetown), Senator John Whitmire (District 15 in Houston), and Senator Judith Zaffirini (District 21 in Laredo).
For those of you for whom this process of letter-writing seems daunting, here are a couple of suggestions to help to make things easier…
- Compose your communication in a typed document – for example, using Microsoft Word. Once the body of the text is set, it’s fairly quick and easy to customize the contact information for each of the legislators with whom you would like to communicate. Simply change the “salutation” at the beginning of the letter prior to printing or otherwise sending each copy of the information.
- Consider sending your message via email. Contact information for each of the Texas Legislators on the House and Senate committees considering HB 29 and SB 732 can be found via the links associated with their names in the paragraphs above. Once you click on the link of the intended Legislator’s name, you will be taken to their individual contact Home Page. Next to the legislator’s picture at the top left of the page is an EMAIL link that will open text boxes that can be filled in with your personalized message. It’s easy to copy and paste the information from an existing Word Document into the box for the email message body. (Fair warning though, that there is a 5000 word maximum for these emails. If you are wordy, like me, you might find that you need to edit your message down a bit to meet this guideline.)
For reference and/or inspiration, here are several links to information that Symmetry has published over time regarding the benefits of easy public access to physical therapy. This information might help you to generate your own personal story line. Feel free to utilize the concepts and statistics.
Would You Benefit From Improved Access to Physical Therapy?
Safe and Effective: Choose Physical Therapy for Your Back Pain
For Musculoskeletal Pain or Injury, Get Physical Therapy First
Secondary Effects of the Opiod Addiction Epidemic
We hope that by the time Symmetry’s next newsletter comes out, we are able to report further forward progress of this legislation. Stay tuned!