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Colorado in Motion’s Tim Flynn a Part of the APTA’s Centennial Anniversary Celebration

Dismantling the ‘Industrial Medical Complex’

The 2021 Maley Lecture was a sobering look at what health care is getting wrong — and a hopeful call for PTs and PTAs to set things right.

If you’re looking for subtlety, Tim Flynn, PT, PhD, FAPTA, is not your guy — at least when it comes to the state of health care today.

“Our society’s beliefs about pain are killing us,” Flynn said. “And the modern U.S. industrial medical complex has created, promoted, and sustained an epidemic in pain.”

Flynn’s comments were made during his delivery of the 26th John H.P. Maley Lecture as part of the association’s centennial anniversary celebration Sept. 10-14. The annual lecture honors members who have made contributions in clinical practice and is known as a platform that encourages its lecturers to explore sometimes-edgy clinical issues.

The lecture was both a deconstruction of society’s predominant approach to health care and a roadmap of possible paths for change. Keys to that change, according to Flynn, will be loosening the grip of a corporatized care mentality, and PTs and PTAs willing to make the fullest possible use of their skills and training.

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