Cognitive Rehabilitation: Cut Costs by Reducing Disability After Brain Injury

After a brain injury from a concussion, stroke or other event, some have difficulty returning to school, work or family responsibilities.

Cognitive rehabilitation therapy may be needed to recover concentration and other brain functions so that life is back on track.

With access to cognitive rehabilitation therapy, injured children can recover and keep up with their schoolmates instead of falling behind, injured workers can recover instead of facing a lifetime of unemployment, and injured parents can recover and care for their children instead of leaving them with family or sending them to foster care.

Commercial insurance often includes cognitive rehabilitation therapy, but Pennsylvania Medical Assistance does not.

For those on Medical Assistance due to disabling brain injury, recovery is in the best interest of the individual and cost-effective for the state.

Without access to cognitive rehabilitation, brain injured children and adults remain disabled, their cognitive impairments become life-long, they need life-long assistance, and they become concentrated in state programs for psychiatric crisis care (20%), domestic abusers (over 50%), delinquent youth (60%), adult prison (82%), chronic homelessness (85%), and intellectual disabilities (90%).

In September 2012, the Acquired Brain Injury Network of Pennsylvania sent the Pennsylvania Office of Medical Assistance Programs a formal request for Medical Assistance coverage of cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

We need your support to convince Pennsylvania that Medical Assistance coverage for cognitive rehabilitation therapy is essential.

No one should be disabled for a lifetime because rehabilitation was denied.

For more information, contact info@abin-pa.org or 800-516-8052.

Barbara Dively is the Executive Director of the Acquired Brain Injury Network of Pennsylvania (www.abin-pa.org).