With the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, and subsequent social distancing and business closures, EVOLVE is now offering physical therapy services via telehealth.
We strive to provide the same level of high quality services over the internet, primarily using a HIPAA-secure videoconferencing system. Using this system, we believe that we can still provide you with the highest quality physical therapy care.
When something like COVID-19 strikes, it can feel like life gets put on hold. But we know that’s just not true. We all still have injuries and pain to manage. We want to stay active and healthy. Telehealth physical therapy can be a way to keep moving forward even if you cannot leave your home.
How do we recreate the experience of an in-person session online?
We are continually refining our telehealth process to bring you the highest quality physical therapy services online. However, the majority of our process is the same:
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Review your medical history.
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Listen closely to your subjective report – what hurts? When? For how long? How does it change? What does it feel like? When does it occur? By listening closely we can hone in on the root cause of the problem.
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Objective tests and measures – We will walk you through a comprehensive physical exam, including range of motion, strength, and movement assessments. We’ll help demonstrate tests and then interpret them for you.
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Determine possible pain generators and contributing factors. What is hurting, and why?
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Develop a complete plan including recovery strategies, exercise, activity modification, and trigger management.
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Demonstrate and teach treatments during the session.
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Follow up via email with videos to all plan components.
If there are any red flags or uncertainties that demand immediate in-person follow up, we will share that with you and recommend next steps.
What are limitations and advantages of telehealth PT?
The primary limitation of telemedicine is obvious: we cannot perform hands-on physical examination and treatment, where we use our training to tease out subtleties and provide specific manual therapy interventions. However, our goal is continue improving our skill set so that you do not need the hands-on component. This will include more videos for providing self care, including self soft tissue treatment, self taping, therapeutic exercises, activation exercises, activity modification strategy, trigger management, and recovery positioning. While manual therapy techniques can be helpful to promote healing and reduce pain, a large body of peer-reviewed research suggests that most conditions can be resolved without hands-on manual therapy, and so we can still achieve excellent results with telehealth sessions.
Despite this limitation, there are tremendous advantages to telehealth PT. Mainly, you can receive high level physical medicine care while remaining safe wherever you are. We can also empower you to better manage your own condition. We remain committed to providing the highest quality of care, including accurate differential diagnosis, education, and active management.
It is our duty as health professionals to not just treat patients, but also promote sound public and population health policy. If we contribute to the spread of a virus like COVID-19 with an in-person visit, than we have done more harm that good. As such, we are excited to offer a high quality service online when necessary.
If you have any questions about telehealth physical therapy, or know anyone who might benefit from this service, you can contact us here.
