For over a decade, rehabilitation therapy providers have been penalized by an outdated Medicare payment policy that discourages care their patients need most. The Removing Excessive Cuts to Outpatient and Vital Essential Rehabilitation (RECOVER Act), H.R. 8386, would finally fix this issue, but we need your help to get it across the finish line. 

The problem: The Multiple Procedure Payment Reduction (MPPR) policy has been reducing Medicare reimbursement for therapy services since 2011. Under MPPR, when a patient requires more than one therapy service on the same day, only the first service is fully reimbursed. All subsequent services are subject to a 50% reduction in the practice expense portion, which accounts for roughly 45% of a service's total value. For example, a stroke patient receiving both physical therapy and speech therapy on the same day would have the highest paid code reimbursed, but all the rest decreased by MPPR. This applies even when the services are delivered by different therapists using completely different equipment and clinical resources. 

Why this matters to your organization: As a rehabilitation therapy provider or clinician in long-term care, PTs, OTs, and SLPs work together every day to deliver coordinated, interdisciplinary care to some of Medicare's most complex patients. MPPR directly penalizes that model. It creates a financial burden for delivering clinically appropriate, same-day therapy services. The exact kind of comprehensive care that helps seniors recover faster, regain independence, and avoid costly hospitalizations. 

The financial reality: MPPR doesn't exist in isolation. When combined with the 15% cut to therapy assistant services and the cumulative 9% reduction to therapy reimbursement since 2020, these cuts have made it increasingly difficult for providers to sustain their therapy programs. This has caused a systematic undervaluation by an arbitrary policy that Congress itself has acknowledged was never based on real clinical or cost data. 

The solution: Congresswoman Ross has introduced H.R. 8386, the RECOVER Act (Removing Excessive Cuts to Outpatient and Vital Essential Rehabilitation), which would repeal the MPPR reduction.   

Your voice matters. Please take a moment to write to your Member of Congress and urge them to support the RECOVER Act.