Your Therapy Benefits Reset January 1 — Use Them Right

Most commercial insurance plans — BCBSM, Priority, HAP, Aetna, Cigna, UHC — cover a set number of therapy visits per benefit year, commonly 20 to 60. On January 1 (for most plans), that bank refills. Knowing how the reset works turns it from a bureaucratic trivia fact into a planning tool.

How visit banks actually work

The cap counts visits, usually combined across physical and occupational therapy, within your plan's benefit year. Used or not, the count resets when the new benefit year starts — unused visits don't roll over, and a new injury mid-year doesn't mint new ones. Medicare works differently (no visit cap; a documentation threshold that also resets January 1), and Michigan auto no-fault has no annual cap at all.

Three ways to use the reset wisely

• Ran out in the fall? If you exhausted visits before finishing recovery, January restores access — book early, because the first weeks fill with everyone who had the same idea.
• Deductible already met? The flip side: if you've met your deductible and out-of-pocket maximum late in the year, December care can cost you far less than January care. Sometimes finishing strong this year beats starting fresh next year — we'll run your numbers honestly either way.
• Chronic problem you've postponed? A fresh bank in January is the clean runway for the knee, back, or shoulder you've been managing around. Evaluations booked in the first weeks get your whole plan inside one benefit year.

Know your number before you need it

Your visit allowance lives in your plan documents under rehabilitation or habilitation benefits — or let us pull it: we verify exact remaining visits, deductible status, and referral requirements before your first appointment, and we track the count at every visit so the end of coverage is never a surprise.

Wherever you are in the calendar, the right move is the same: get evaluated, get the real numbers, and plan care around them deliberately.