Help at home
Telehealth services bring physical therapy into patients’ homes
While people are asked to stay home and away from crowds, what happens if you need to see a doctor or other health care professional?
There are obvious risks associated with going to a clinic or hospital. Telehealth, where diagnoses and treatments are delivered using a phone, laptop, tablet or desktop computer, is often a better way to get treatment. Telehealth helps keep people out of emergency departments, reduces crowds in waiting rooms and helps health workers stay on schedule with appointments.
But what are the limits to such treatment?
Physical therapy to improve musculoskeletal conditions is one of the most challenging health sectors in a quarantine environment, because it is traditionally thought of as handson treatment. Among physical therapy patients, a small percentage will need to be seen by a clinic for imaging or manual therapy. But for most, treatment can start immediately.
Shelby Township physical therapist Nichole Stiefel began offering Phzio telerehab services just as COVID-19 cases began emerging in Michigan.
“I am extremely happy I can offer physical therapy services to patients during this difficult time, as most brick-and-mortar outpatient clinics are closed,” she says. “It’s a great platform to communicate with patients and deliver social care.”
How it works
With traditional medicine, a patient must drive — sometimes an hour or more — to the doctor’s office. With telerehab, you can do an analysis remotely with your smartphone, computer or tablet. You can work rehab into your lunch hour, between meetings or while the kids are at soccer practice.
At your appointment time, clicking a button brings you and your physical therapist into the virtual treatment room. Place your phone, laptop or tablet on the floor and start playing the two- to three-minute exercise videos.
As you do the exercises, your therapist monitors, giving feedback and modifying the exercises as necessary through video chat, audio chat or texting. It’s a private and one-onone experience.
Telehealth signaling a paradigm shift
This current pandemic will push telehealth platforms further into the forefront of medical delivery. By the time the next pandemic happens, more health providers already will have built a telehealth component into their practices.
It’s cost effective, safe and gives more patients access to immediate care.
Many people benefit from having telehealth option, including older Americans and those who are immunosuppressed or have cardiopulmonary diseases putting them at higher risk of catastrophic complications if they contract COVID-19. Likewise for people who live with or interact frequently with high-risk patients.
“The top benefit is the convenience both for the patient and the physical therapist,” Stiefel says. “Right now, obviously patients’ schedules are a lot more open with what’s going on in the world. But as schedules return to normal, patients can still have a session anywhere they have an internet connection.”
Telerehab empowers patients
Because it’s convenient, patients are more likely to seek help sooner. If you try to ignore injuries, your body begins to move in ways that avoid triggering pain. Soon, you’ll develop poor movement patterns that affect other parts of your body. A therapist must unravel the symptoms to find the source of the problem before working on the cure.
But with telerehab, you’re likelier to fix the problem faster, before complications arise.
In situations such as this current coronavirus pandemic, telerehab treatments give patients more control. Instead of sitting at home suffering in pain, they can interact with their physical therapist in real time and do the exercises at home while minimizing their risk of being exposed to other people’s illnesses.
Stiefel says she is impressed by how user-friendly the platform is.
“No matter your age, it can be easily used in your home. The oneon-one time patients receive with their therapist is also a great benefit.”