Page 30 - Mobility Management, August/September 2020

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Mark Schmeler: Showing Our Value
adolescence as an industry. Where is it now?
Mark Schmeler: As a profession, we are growing up.
We have a curriculum, we have a degree, we have
an exam, we have a professional standards board,
and we’re able to self police ourselves very well. That includes the frontline clinicians, the ATPs, the manufac- turers: All of us together have demonstrated that we can police ourselves and follow best practices and codes
of ethics and measure outcomes and have our own science. With all of that, we will also eventually have our own separate benefit category like O&P.
They’re going to see there’s value to what ATPs do
CMS is not going to question us as much. They’re going to see there’s value to what ATPs do.
Because the MRT was classified as a new degree program, I had to defend it to the Pitt Vice-Chancellor’s Advisory Board, which was all the schools of the Health
Sciences: Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health, Nursing, and our own school of Health and Rehab Science. I had to give my five-minute elevator pitch of what an ATP was and what a Rehab Tech was, and why we need this master’s degree.
When I explained what an ATP does, I said it in such a way that it wasn’t just about the wheelchair. This is the person that can go to the home and install home mods such as grab bars and ramps, they can look at the vehicle, they look at the environment. I had to give them all the demographics.
I think it was the Dean of Dentistry who said, “There
is actually somebody who does this?” I said, “Yeah, it’s called an ATP. They’re all over the country.” And he said, “Let me tell you about my mother, who’s 90 years old: She’s living by herself, she can’t get up and down the stairs, and I’m trying to manage all this. This is fantastic.”
All the other Deans were nodding their heads like “Why would we not do this [degree]?” These are Deans of the schools of health at one of the most prestigious schools in the country when it comes to healthcare. And they’re sitting there saying, ‘This is so overdue.’” m
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