What Is Telehealth for Physical Therapy?

First, all of us at Complete Game would like to wish health and safety to you and your family during these challenging times.  Everyone is still adjusting to this new necessity for social distancing and trying to maintain some sense of normalcy.  At Complete Game, in an effort to offer continued care for our patients, we are now providing physical therapy through telehealth.  Today I’d like to introduce to you telehealth, or telerehabilitation, and explain what a telerehab virtual visit would look like.   

Telehealth in physical therapy is providing physical therapy services over a technology platform instead of in person.  Telemedicine has been used for a long time by medical doctors and mental health professionals to provide care for those who are unable to attend office visits due to medical or transportation issues.  It has also been used in a relatively limited fashion in the rehab world. Admittedly, it was initially difficult for me to wrap my mind around telerehab as I am a therapist who relies greatly on manual therapy techniques to help my patients.  The more I have researched and utilized the telehealth approach to therapy, the more I am realizing how useful it can be to not only help patients maintain the gains they have made with formal PT, but also to improve function.

Our virtual visits at Complete Game are done through Go To Meeting, a HIPAA compliant video conferencing platform and can be done on any phone, laptop, or computer with a webcam.   Your therapist will send you an invitation to join a meeting at an agreed upon time. We begin just as we usually do in PT by talking for a bit about what is going on with you and how you are doing.  We then will take a look at what motions or activities are causing you trouble. Depending on what your restrictions are, we may instruct you on some self massage or mobilization techniques using some basic tools such as a foam roller, lacrosse ball or tennis ball.  Next, we will have you perform some exercises and instruct you on what you should be doing on your own until our next session. Sessions tend to last about 30 minutes and the outcomes have been excellent.

I hope this blog posting gives you a better idea of what a telehealth virtual PT visit looks like.  It was difficult for me to accept that PT could be done virtually at first, but the more telerehab appointments we conduct, the more we are realizing it is a viable option and a valuable tool.  

We are now offering free initial virtual physical therapy assessments.  If you are interested, please email me at gcrossman@completegamept.com and we can set up a time that is convenient for you.  Thank you and be well!