A key state Senate committee vote appears slated for Monday, according to informed sources.

The verbal free-for-all involves an effort by Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) to push a new bill through the legislature that would permit medical corporations to hire their own physical therapists. Existing law bars such therapists from working for these corporations.

 

This seemingly technical issue has sparked political fireworks because it pits thousands independent therapists against well-heeled doctors, podiatrists and chiropractors who want to control the physical therapy they prescribe for their patients, and to profit from it as well.

 

Independent therapists call this a “self-referral-for-profit” scheme and claim it would put them out of business and lead to substandard care

 

The controversy has provoked tough rhetoric in recent weeks, much of it focused on the agency charged with enforcing existing law and regulating physical therapists across the state.

 

Known as the Physical Board of California, it operates under the aegis of the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs.

 

Barry Broad, a lobbyist for a chiropractor group that supports Hayashi’s new bill, had harsh for the board’s executive director, Steve Hartzell.    

 

In a series of e-mails to NBC LA, Broad described Hartzell as “a regulator” who  “apparently spends a lot of time with the lobbying group for the profession he is supposed to regulate.”

 

Hartzell, Broad said  “is, in my view thoroughly corrupted… a pimp for those he is supposed to regulate.”

   

Hartzell, declined through a board spokeswoman to comment on what she characterized as “name-calling.”

 

But officials of a group of independent therapists who oppose the new bill contradicted Broad, saying that Hartzell has no involvement with them.

 

To complicate matters, the independent therapists Hartzell is charged with regulating have their own complaints about him. They claim that he and his agency haven’t done enough to enforce existing law, or to punish therapists who are working for medical corporations in violation of it.