Why rebuilt doesn’t take insurance
At first, it sounds crazy. Not accepting insurance is not the “norm” in the healthcare world. Usually when booking an appointment with a medical facility, you call and before they will even book you, you or they check to see if that facility accepts your insurance. At Rebuilt, however, we are the opposite! Leave that insurance card at home, you don’t need it and we don’t want it. There are so many reasons that Rebuilt chose to be an out of network provider: freedom in treatment, honesty, intention, cost to the patient, and so much more. Below are just a few of the reasons we don’t check in with your insurance before treating you!
And here’s why:
The biggest reason is that Rebuilt Movement & Rehab is a clinic where YOU are the main priority. In the typical PT clinic, insurance tends to run the show (behind the scenes). Clinicians are directed by what types of treatment your insurance deems necessary, how long they think you need to be treated for, who can see you, etc. Let me rephrase that: your insurance company, who is not trained at the doctorate level to evaluate and treat your unique situation, is deciding what is “necessary” for your treatment. If you aren’t a high school or college athlete and you’re able to do your “activities of daily living” without difficulty, but your goal is to be able to go into down dog or do a hang clean without pain, your insurance could say that physical therapy isn’t medically necessary and only give you a few sessions or none at all. At RMR, we believe that ANY goal you have is valid and medically necessary - so we took insurance out of the drivers seat and let you and your goals drive your medical care for once!
We want to provide high quality, one on one care to our patients. Insurance limitations and their payment model has created an environment that we don’t feel is patient centered or optimal for patient outcomes. Many conventional PT clinics are seeing 2-4 patients per hour, scheduling patients every 15-30 minutes and utilizing PT aides (who are essentially unlicensed employees that take patients through their exercises)**. And it’s not the clinic’s fault. These are a businesses trying to make money and because of insurance limitations and decreased insurance reimbursement, they are forced to overload their schedules, overload their clinicians, and because of all this, provide less than optimal care. After working in a clinic like this, I was already feeling burnt out after less than 2 years; burnt out from seeing a ton of patient’s each day, burnt out from feeling like just a number in the money making process, and worst of all, feeling burnt out of not being able to provide high quality care for my patients - which is not something I am willing to give up! RMR doesn’t take insurance so that we can spend every session focusing on you, ensuring you’re making progress and moving toward your goals.
**Being a PT aide is very beneficial for 16+ year olds that want to get into the PT world. It is legal & in these busy clinics, aides are necessary for patients to stay on track with their exercises while their therapist has 1-3 other patients. We love PT aides, were aides at one time which was an incredible learning experience, and are not knocking PT aides at all!
Building on the two points above, insurance limits how far we are able to progress patients and the “style” of therapy we want to do. In a typical bout of PT, if insurance sees you deadlifting barbells or doing snatches, they likely will question the necessity of what you’re doing and say “well can’t they be doing that on their own in a gym or with a trainer.” While we love and fully support trainers and gyms and work closely with them, therapists at RMR are Doctors of Physical Therapy and movement experts, highly trained to observe movement and pay attention to things the average eye doesn’t pick up on. We’re heavily trained in biomechanics, compensatory patterns, research, and medically significant physiology. At Rebuilt, we believe the exercise phase of your rehab process is the most important part for the active individual trying to stay active. This is the part that bridges the gap between traditional healthcare and long lasting health and fitness. We don’t want to just get you to baseline and then be done, we want to get you stronger and instill long term improvement. We are here to manage pain and once that pain is resolved with long term progress in mind, we are SO excited to refer our patients to good trainers and gyms! Not to be a broken record but, we don’t believe insurance should have a hand in the decision of when to transition from therapy to trainer.
Price wise, we understand it’s scary, but out of network can end up being cheaper overall. Typically with insurance, you will have copays, deductibles, co-insurances, or all of the above that a conventional clinic will require you to pay up front each visit. On top of this, insurance doesn’t typically cover the full cost that a PT clinic will bill which leads to the patient getting stuck with a bill on top of the cost they already paid each visit. In my experience with this model, patient’s receive this bill and feel shocked, lied to, and betrayed because they thought the payments made up front covered their portion. A typical therapy session will cost $130-250… after copays/coinsurance/deductible contributions, insurance companies will typically cover 50-80% of a session and if you have not met your deductible, they may cover less than that. This leaves a big bill that arrives in the mail weeks or months after your finish your therapy plan that you may not have been expecting. At RMR, you will know the cost of each session up front with no added fees. Upon request, we can also provide a “superbill” for each visit with the insurance codes we use so that you can submit for reimbursement.
Finally, and just as important, we believe the fee for service model creates an atmosphere of intention. Intention, from both you and your therapist. Intention for your recovery, your health, and your goals. When a client pays for the full service, even if they know they can get some reimbursement from their insurance , we find that they are more dedicated to their rehab, make better and faster progress, feel more empowered, and own their recovery. Our main goal is your goals and our out of network model is the best path to take for you to reach those goals.
All of these points add up to use providing the highest level of care you can receive in a manner that is best for YOU, driven by YOU, and designed uniquely FOR YOU! Come feel the difference at Rebuilt Movement & Rehab. You’ll be glad ya did it.
