2010 so far has been a year of unpredictable outcomes and extensive change in the world of health care, and APTA is working closely with Congress and officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to ensure that the physical therapy profession is preserved and ultimately improved. With so much potential for constant, rapid change, you might wonder why APTA adopts a 2-year schedule for identifying the federal legislative and regulatory issues it deems critical for our advocacy efforts. The reasons are clear – but they also emphasize why it’s so important for APTA members to respond to our biennial survey when the time for determining public policy priorities is announced. The association’s “ critical issues survey ,” announced last week and open to all APTA members, coincides with the 2-year term of the US Congress, enabling APTA to align and adjust its policy agenda with the campaign cycle. In non-survey years, APTA continues to implement the policy agenda as well as build and educate its grassroots network. APTA staff work with the critical issues as a blueprint of its policy activities, and when the policy winds shift in Washington, DC, the association makes the necessary adjustments with APTA’s Board of Directors and Government Affairs Committee. This was seen in the 111th Congress as health care reform introduced new issues and the association outlined policy principles to guide our objectives to advance physical therapy within this health care reform environment. As important as, if not more so than, the 2-year timeframe is the process for gathering and prioritizing the critical issues on which APTA will focus its resources for the coming 24 months. The key is to actively engage all APTA members by seeking their individual views on the relative importance of issues that have been identified with input from the Government Affairs Committee, Federal Affairs Liaisons, and APTA chapters and sections. It’s a powerful APTA member benefit to have a voice in how APTA will use its influence and resources on Capitol Hill. The survey results will be tallied by September 12, so I encourage all APTA members to take advantage of their association membership and participate in the survey .

Original Source of Shaping APTA’s Advocacy Efforts