Sunday 29 March 2015

Discussion: Are you told not to assess?

Are you told not to assess? 

There is sometimes pressure from funding agencies to take short cuts. 

We need to discuss, as a profession, how this can and cannot look.

As a licensed health professional, the OT must check 

"... that terms of agreement in a contract with payer are not in contravention of professional obligations to client" (Association of Canadian Occupational Therapy Regulatory Organizations (ACOTRO))

Specifically, we can train a parent to teach their own child but we must assess the child and help the parent choose appropriate goals. For instance, we cannot spend time teaching a parent all about sensory strategies if that child is not affected in daily life by sensory strategies and it would not be appropriate to encourage a parent to teach a 4 year old how to tie shoes. 

Thus, when the funding agency is saying it is unnecessary to assess, we have to be careful to qualify that it may be unnecessary to produce an assessment report, but it is necessary to at least do informal assessment. 

Thoughts? Please post in comments

Charlene Wright
Occupational Therapist

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I completely agree with you!! We are often assesing as we are treating and treating as we are assess.... assessment is 100% necessary for effective treatment. How that assessment is document is another story, it could be very simple, it could be informal or formal, but is a definte must! If they dont want an assessment then they should just google OT strategies and try that.

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