are you kidding, god?
The State of Arizona is experiencing massive budget problems, which is no surprise. What IS a surprise, however, is how deep they’re willing to cut to end the year in the black.
We just found out tuesday that they are cutting the rates we can bill for therapy by 10%. The therapists are absorbing about half of that, and we in the office are absorbing the other half. Sounds kinda crappy, huh?
Get this: today, we find out that the state is cutting ALL funding for kids in the 0-3 age range, except for in extreme circumstances. Suddenly, the entire bottom dropped out of our industry. We are going to lose at least 30% of our business to this cut, and we’ve got 35 days until it goes into effect. But it’s not just those kids that we will lose. Full-time therapists absolutely require that they can see some kids in that age bracket, since all the kids older than that are in school during school hours, and therapists can’t get in 40 hour weeks using only after-school hours, unless parents of 6 year olds with cerebral palsy want the therapist coming over at 9pm to provide services.
We are probably going to lose close to 60% of our business when this is all over. I never imagined that this would happen, especiallly after the 10% rate cut we took tuesday. We were thinking “well, at least we know what they are going to do, and we know we can get through it.” I couldn’t have dreamed that they would cut off all early intervention funding. It’s scary what this means to families of children with developmental disabilities. Providers will be going out of business one after another. Kids will suffer. The entire business model has shifted to the point that full-time therapists are just a memory, and everyone will be working part-time, billing after school hours only. All the therapists who used to work part time in the mornings, and then pick their kids up from school will have to either retire at 30, or give their children house keys for when they get off the bus alone, and hope that PBS can keep them occupied on Saturdays when they are out trying to make a living.
I’ve seen god pull off some crazy things in my day, but I’m not sure where he’s going with this one.
