What is OT?
Occupational Therapy is utilized for people across all ages and abilities to help them return to meaningful activities such as caring for themself, work, or hobbies. Occupational therapy helps people recover after accidents or surgery, adapt to disabilities or chronic pain, and regain independence in daily life. These improvements lead to a better quality of life.
Why OT is for Everyone
OT supports people across the lifespan. OT can begin from birth to 3 programs, and you can even find OT in the hospice setting, signaling that OTs can help you across your entire lifespan. Occupational Therapists practitioners work in many settings. Including in-home therapy, rehabilitation facilities, long-term care, memory care, outpatient clinics, mental health centers, and schools, serving people with a wide range of needs. Focus is on personalized plans for helping each person participate more fully in daily life.
How OT Helps at Different Life Stages
Kids
Support for sensory challenges, fine motor skills, routines, and play. You will often find OTs start with children in their home when participating in birth-to-3 programs. Sometimes these children will carry over to school age and work with OTs throughout their school year to work on social skills or even fine motor tasks that improve their handwriting.
Adults
Help with work tasks, injury recovery, daily routines, and home life. Many adults recovering from an injury need OT services to help them regain range of motion and strength while allowing the injury to heal safely. Other patients receive diagnoses later in life of chronic illnesses, such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Fibromyalgia. They often need support learning how to manage the challenges these conditions can create. OTs can help these patients learn how to better adapt their surroundings to accommodate their needs and allow them to be more independent despite their diagnosis.
Older Adults
Support for staying independent, safe, and confident at home. As we age, our bodies begin to change, and we may develop arthritis, have joint replacements, or even generalized weakness. OTs can help you find activity modifications to allow decreased pain, improved strength, and independence with tasks.
How OT Helps With Daily Life
- Getting dressed, cooking, bathing, driving, working, and doing household tasks
- Building strength, coordination, focus, and problem-solving skills. Oftentimes, patients will come in with pain from completing daily tasks or hobbies. OTs can help them learn safe exercises or ways to complete these tasks. Patients often don’t realize that some of their normal tasks or habits can be contributing to their pain, and simple modifications can help.
- Adapting routines or environments to make daily tasks easier. We can help patients find ways to more easily complete tasks, such as adding foam tubing to knitting needles to allow decreased pain while maintaining grasp on them.
What OT Treatment Can Look Like
- Personalized program
- Hands-on strategies, exercises, and practical skill-building
- Monitoring response and adjusting
Does Insurance cover OT?
Insurance does cover occupational therapy services. The coverage depends on the individual type of insurance and can range from patient to patient.