Telerehabilitation is a solution rapidly adopted throughout the crisis by many health care professionals. Here is how it can help shape the future of physiotherapy.
Musculoskeletal conditions are one of the major causes of world morbidity. In common situations, access to the conventional health care of some people may be problematic and has become an all-embracing barrier amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth, defined as a distant health care provision, is the solution to numerous obstacles and was rapidly adopted throughout the crisis by many health care professionals. World Physical Therapy Day observed on September 8th raises awareness about the critical contribution that physiotherapists make to society by enabling people to be mobile, well, and independent.
Telerehabilitation, also known as virtual care, is the delivery of professional rehabilitation services, such as those of a physiotherapist via telecommunications technology, covering all elements of patient care including patient interview, physical evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, maintenance, consultation, training, and educational activities encompassing media, such as video conferencing, e-mail, applications and wearable communications.
This also provides patients with valuable benefits such as fewer obstacles to travel, flexible exercise times, and the opportunity to integrate skills better into daily life. However, in comparison with normal surgical care in populations, the effects of telerehabilitation physiotherapy on postoperative functional results are still ambiguous.
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Benefits Of Telerehabilitation
Research has demonstrated that telerehabilitation has different clinical advantages and cost savings. These include:
- Reducing rehabilitative and hospitalization rates
- Supporting early rehabilitation discharge
- Immediate access to out-patient rehabilitation services
- Reducing waitlists
- Increasing cost-containing care efficiency
- Preserving continuity of care
- Enhancing health and quality of life
- Supporting early recovery and reducing unnecessary work
Is Telerehabilitation Used To Only Manage COVID-19 Patients?
Telerehabilitation was an option open to Physiotherapists even before COVID-19 and has been for many years for delivering physiotherapy worldwide; significantly transitioning from the in-person delivery of physiotherapy to telehealth.
If you reside in a rural or distant area, virtual visits for physiotherapy can help you get the attention you need and increase access to care. It also helps connect clients to a specialist that cannot be offered help locally while overcoming various obstacles.
However, even when the services in person are resumed, there was a substantial interest of 64% people to continue with telerehabilitation, establishing that this service can continue as part of the provision of physiotherapy services, in at least certain locations, beyond the epidemic.
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Telerehabilitation Challenges
Though this technology makes lives easier by providing alternative treatment options, it also comes with some setbacks.
- Patients’ willingness to switch from in-person to telerehabilitation
- Some conditions/patients require manual or hands-on therapy
- Getting third-party insurers and extended health insurance benefits to cover treatment charges is difficult
- Delayed services owing to technology faults or patients’ inability to comprehend (especially in the elderly)
Success with Telerehability
- High patient satisfaction
- Substantial emphasis on training, practice, and self-management approaches
- Better accountability and commitment to treatment regimes
- Satisfactory progress and results of treatment
- A more collaborative approach between the patient and the physiotherapist
- Ensured continuation of therapy amidst the pandemic
- Greater evaluation and accommodations of the home environment
Telerehabilitation involves more than just switching to a new platform; it necessitates a cultural shift in how physiotherapists and the general public’s perspective of physiotherapy, traditionally viewed as a physically demanding profession. How people perceive its effectiveness is another key influencing its adoption. Given the strong desire to continue delivering telerehabilitation (and, in the current environment, the recommendation from health officials to do so in the short and medium-term), whether through a hybrid model of care or not, demand from the public must also rise in order to successfully integrate telerehabilitation as a long-term delivery option for patients.
This post first appeared on The Health Site
