For as long as I've been an OT, I've been hearing about occupational therapy's advocacy to be recognized as behavioral health providers.

This is frankly a little confusing, since OT has deep roots in mental health care — and many of us became OTs because of the unique way the profession holistically considers mental health and physical health, and how the two intersect in everyday function.

Things honestly become even more confusing when you start to dig into what exactly it means to be recognized as a behavioral health provider. What doors does that open to us? What is the current patchwork of states — and what is our desired future?

There is no better person to help us speak to these questions than Halley Read. Halley is the lead author on "Occupational Therapy: A Potential Solution to the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage," published in Psychiatric Services in 2024.

Which gets at exactly the right question: why are we limiting the mental health workforce, when mental health workers are so desperately needed?

This course is intended for OTs, to help us understand this situation — but also for our fellow members of the healthcare team, to understand what OT can contribute and what policy changes would let us work in our full scope.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-as-mental-health-providers

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show

On one hand, it truly feels like we are on track for health technology to transform healthcare as we know it.

On the other hand, we have to weigh the reality that many health tech solutions end up abandoned.

This is especially true of consumer-facing health tech. Some of the latest research shows that around 70% of users abandon health tech apps within 100 days.

Rehabilitation technology fares better — largely because of the clinician in the loop, who prescribes, fits, and supports the technology toward a defined therapeutic goal. But abandonment is still real: even with a clinician involved, one study showed roughly 10–30% of assistive rehab technology is abandoned,. Rates run higher for some device categories, like pediatric AAC devices that show 33% abandonment.

Fortunately, new research is emerging all the time on the factors that drive technology adoption — and, increasingly, structured frameworks to guide our decisions.

In today's course, we are excited to welcome Chris Gaskins, PhD, whose dissertation, "Mental Workload during Prosthetic Training" examined how cognitive demand shapes the way clients learn and adopt health tech. We'll hear how he is thinking about this whole landscape — and, most importantly, how he makes decisions with his clients at his outpatient neuro practice.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/rehab-tech-abandonment

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show

Healthcare has many challenges right now, but so many of them stem back to one looming global reality:

By 2050, the number of people on our planet over age 65 is projected to double. It’s almost hard to wrap your head around the financial impact, the caregiving demands, and just how profoundly this shift will alter society.

Luckily, the latest systematic research is crystal clear: to truly support aging in place, we need multidomain interventions that target the physical, cognitive, and social dimensions of healthy aging.

Even better? We already have a health workforce where multidomain care is our absolute specialty: hello, OT!

Unfortunately, we don't yet have widespread, turn-key business models to deliver this type of care at scale.

Today, we’re talking with Dawn Heiderscheidt, who is pioneering a career and a business in the aging-in-place arena. We’ll learn how she leverages her specialized OT skill set, makes the financials work, and provides much-needed care to her community.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-and-aging-in-place

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show