VOTA is Virginia's leading organization for occupational therapy practitioners and students. VOTA is committed to advocating for and further developing the profession of occupational therapy in our state.

Advocacy Wins
On March 18th, 2021 Senate Bill 1189 passed, making Virginia the first state to successfully pass licensure compact legislation.

The OT Compact Commission is establishing rules and preparation for implementation to begin issuing compact privileges to practice occupational therapy.  Find more on the compact here.


Current Initiatives

Be a part of making sustainable change for OT practice in Virginia! Join our Scope of Practice committee, which is working to draft proposed changes to the Virginia Scope of Practice through legislation in 2025.


You do not need prior advocacy or legislative experience, just bring your knowledge of how our current scope limits your practice.


Meetings take place via Google Meet the 2nd Sunday of each month from 7-8 PM. Efforts for revision take place in small groups throughout the month. If you are interested in joining, contact legislation.vota@gmail.com for more information.

Here is the proposed timeline for the scope of practice revision:


Resources for our current scope of practice can be found at the following links:

Updates will be provided on this page as progress is made.

Meet our Lobbyist
Alexander Macauley, VOTA's legal counsel and lobbyist, provides free legal advice to VOTA members. He frequently assists VOTA members with a wide variety of legal matters including employment contracts, regulatory compliance, and licensure requirements. He can be reached at alexander@macbur.com.


Fun fact: Did you know that each year, members are eligible for one hour of free legal counsel with Alexander? Reach out to him- he loves to hear from members!

National Legislative News


2023

AOTA Partners with Members for Payment Advocacy 
The AOTA Regulatory Affairs staff team closely monitors Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial insurance plans for policy changes, such as NCCI coding edits that impact occupational therapy reimbursement. With regional commercial plans and state-specific Medicaid reimbursement, however, policies can vary widely, so the Regulatory Affairs team also relies on AOTA members and state associations to alert us to upcoming policy changes that will impact the provision of OT services and priorities for payment advocacy. Thanks to one member’s outreach, AOTA was recently able to address a problematic coding edit present in the national Medicaid NCCI edit table when CPT code 97530 (therapeutic activities) is billed by occupational therapy practitioners on the same day as CPT code 97533 (sensory integration). While the Medicaid NCCI edit rules do allow this code pair to be billed together with the use of a modifier to identify the services are separate and distinct from each other, the AOTA member was experiencing significant administrative burden in determining when to appropriately append the modifier on claims because the edit, present on the Medicaid NCCI edit table, was no longer being utilized by Medicare, which the member also bills for her services. Even when the modifier was correctly appended to claims with this code pairing, the member was experiencing delays with payment from Medicaid payers due to increased payer requests for medical records to support modifier use prior to paying the claims.

For more information on this issue, visit AOTA.

Effective Jan 1, 2022 new legislation was enacted that affected billing for OTAs. AOTA has been taking action in order to protect OTA billing. For more information, please visit AOTA's page: Capital Report: Congress Introduces Legislation to Protect OTAs From Pending Medicare Cuts | AOTA (you will need to be an AOTA member to login.)

Contact Us8100 Three Chopt Road, OMG Suite 226| Richmond | VA | 23229
T: (804) 523-2911

office@vaota.org
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