Authors: Adriaan Louw, Kimberly Sumner, Hailey Bruzzone, Lawrence Benz, Debra Rico, Terry Cox.
Background: Various factors have been shown to influence attendance to physical therapy (PT), including various psychosocial factors. Anecdotally, it is believed that higher copays are associated with fewer PT visits and shorter duration, but limited research is available to support this.
Objective: To determine if higher copays for patients attending outpatient PT for low back pain is associated with lower number of total treatment visits and duration of treatment in months.
Design: Retrospective review.
Methods: A random sample of 117 patient visits to PT for low back pain prior to COVID-19 were gathered including various demographic data points, co-pay dollar amounts, duration of care, and total number of visits. Data were analyzed to determine if higher copays for patients attending outpatient PT for low back pain is associated with fewer visits and shorter total treatment time, using correlation coefficients (ρ ≥ 0.4 taken to indicate moderate correlation) to examine relationship strength, multiple linear regression, and generalized Poisson regression.
Results: The variables Total Number of Visits and Copay Amount failed to have a significant correlation coefficient (ρ = -0.06). The variables Duration of Treatment (months) and Copay Amount failed to have a significant correlation coefficient (ρ = -0.15). Copay did not have a significant impact on number of treatments or duration of visit for patients being treated for LBP.
Conclusion: Higher co-pays for patients attending PT for LBP are not associated with fewer visits and shorter durations of care. The result from this study calls for more research into the relative importance of PT copays, and what other factors determine patient attendance in PT.
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