One of my biggest challenges in contracting music therapy services is finding financial resources to fund the contract.  Organizations become quite excited when they observe the benefits music therapy can bring to their clients, but they often view music therapy as an “extra” or a “non-essential” service that is difficult to fund, especially in this tough economic time.  This first became apparent when I was contacted by the family of a two year old who had received music therapy services during a hospital stay and was transferring to a hospital closer to home for rehabilitation, which did not provide music therapy services.  The child had muscle weakness following seizure activity when she had extremely high fevers with influenza A.  The child was resistant to both physical therapy and occupational therapy, but was responsive during music therapy, which helped her progress toward discharging from the first hospital.  Even though the family’s insurance company accepted the treatment codes and procedures I proposed using music therapy, since music therapy is not a licensed profession, the insurance company did not recognize our board-certification process as acceptable for approval.  We were able to find a grant to fund music therapy services for the family for a month, but the grant money could also be used to purchase diapers and other home supplies to care for the child’s needs, so understandably, the family opted to discontinue music therapy services prematurely to use the grant money for other purposes.

Soon after this experience, I joined a state-wide task force to begin the process of gaining recognition of music therapy services from state legislators, who might guide us in determining how music therapy can be recognized as a legitimate and reimbursable profession by insurance companies.  We hope that by gaining government recognition, music therapy clients may be able to have their services covered by insurance companies (similar to chiropractic care) or reimbursed by government agencies to care for those with special needs or in nursing facilities.  I have started this conversation with my local state legislators, and hopefully they will be able to see music therapy in action by observing my work in the field.  The state task force is spreading the word to empower all music therapists across the state to do the same by helping to host a conference to equip them with all the information they need in their efforts.  If you have experienced the power of music therapy in your life, please let your state legislators know about it, and perhaps more people will be able to benefit as you have!