One CPO, one hire, one opening in a fitting schedule somewhere. O&P workforce math works like that.

There’s a particular kind of disruption in prosthetic care that rarely makes news: the appointment where you walk in expecting your prosthetist and find out, often from a front-desk person who does not have much detail to offer, that they are not there anymore. Not sick. Not running late. Just gone to somewhere else. Someone will see you. It will be fine.

It is usually fine, eventually. It is rarely fine immediately, because a socket fitting is not a transaction you hand off cleanly. It is built on accumulated knowledge of a specific body — your residual limb volume at 8 a.m. versus 4 p.m., your gait under load, the three small things your previous prosthetist tried and the one that worked. That knowledge does not transfer in a chart note. It transfers over appointments, and a new relationship starts from the beginning.

The O&P EDGE reported this week that Bionic Skins, a Boston-based company, has hired Bri Perry, CPO, as its prosthetist and clinical manager. Perry had been at ForMotion Clinic since 2025.

That is the news item. Here is the context it sits inside.

The field Perry is working in is under real strain

A study published earlier this month and reported by The O&P EDGE — which we covered in depth — found that approximately 78 percent of O&P clinicians are experiencing burnout. That is a high number in any specialized healthcare field. In a field as small as O&P, it is a number with structural consequences.

Becoming a certified prosthetist or orthotist takes roughly five to seven years from decision to independent clinical practice: undergraduate preparation, a master’s program from an accredited O&P school, a residency, board certification. There is no short track. When experienced clinicians reduce hours, step back from direct patient care, or transition into roles with less of it, the replacement timeline is not months. In underserved areas — rural and frontier regions, post-acute facilities, markets already thin on enrolled suppliers — the math tightens faster.

The administrative pressures contributing to burnout have, if anything, intensified this year. CMS expanded its prior authorization requirements for O&P codes in August, adding more devices to the list of things that require MAC review before delivery. A simultaneous moratorium on new DMEPOS supplier enrollment caps the number of practitioners who can enter the market to offset departures. Each of those policies has its own rationale. Their combined effect on an already stressed workforce is not neutral.

ForMotion, specifically

ForMotion Clinic, where Perry had been working, is a name that has come up in O&P consolidation coverage. Earlier this month we reported on ForMotion’s absorption of Medical Center Orthotics and Prosthetics and Anderson Prosthetics, extending its network across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Consolidating practice networks change internal staffing structures. Practitioners who joined an independent or smaller operation sometimes find that the organization they joined is materially different twelve months later — in management, in billing systems, in culture, in what the day-to-day work looks like.

Perry joined ForMotion in 2025. She is leaving roughly a year later. The reporting does not include her reasons and she does not owe anyone a detailed accounting of her career decisions. The observation is just that this kind of churn is more common inside consolidating networks, and churn has a patient-access consequence regardless of why it happens.

What this particular move looks like

Perry’s role at Bionic Skins is dual: prosthetist and clinical manager. She is, based on that description, still in clinical practice — still presumably seeing patients — while also carrying management responsibilities. That matters. A CPO moving entirely out of direct care is a different data point than one who moves between employers while maintaining clinical work.

The distinction is worth holding. Neither trajectory is a moral failing. A clinician who moves to a less stressful administrative path after years of high-volume patient care and prior authorization battles has made a reasonable choice under structural conditions that were not reasonable. A clinician who moves to a hybrid role at a smaller company may be seeking conditions where direct care is actually sustainable. Both things can be true without anyone being a villain.

Who ends up holding the gap

The frustration is not with individual practitioners. It is with a system in which the workforce pipeline is long and narrow, administrative burden keeps climbing, and the cumulative effect is that access — especially for people with fewer options — is consistently more precarious than the policy documents suggest.

Each move is small. Aggregated, they shape the landscape patients navigate. Somewhere in the Northeast, the schedule at a ForMotion clinic has an opening. It will be filled, or it won’t, or someone will wait longer for the next available appointment. That person probably won’t know why.

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Amputee News does not provide individualized medical or clinical advice. If you are navigating a change in your clinical care — a practitioner leaving, a practice changing ownership — ask your current clinic for a complete transfer of your clinical records, and contact your prescribing physician early about next steps.