Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services (such as physiotherapy) via electronic information and telecommunication technologies – most commonly video chat.

We’ve been doing telehealth consults (or what we call Virtual Physio) at Leading Edge for a while, particularly with many of our rural patients who have difficulty accessing rehab services. We’re obviously doing a lot more at the moment with the COVID-19 situation – which is a great option to have to make sure that we’re still able to help deliver really effective rehab and treatment options, but maximise everyone’s safety in the current environment.

We’ve been asked a bit as to whether physiotherapy can still be effective done remotely via video, and without doubt the answer is YES! For me, the most effective treatment tools at our disposal are our education & advice, individually tailored exercise rehab, and load management – and these are all things that can be done really effectively via telehealth and our Virtual Physio program.

Our assessment tools may look a little bit different, for sure; but its listening to someone’s history and understanding the behaviour of their symptoms that gives the biggest clue as to diagnosis – our testing simply tries to confirm what the patient is already telling us!

The feedback from patients about the telehealth consults has been really positive – that the app for the consult has been really easy to use, and that they’ve got a really clear rehab plan from this as a result.

Personally, I really like the telehealth consult option as it gives me a chance to see what our patients are doing in their own environment – to see how their desk is setup if they’re getting back & neck pain for example, and also to see how they’re doing their exercises with the resources they’ve got access to; which are things we can have a really good influence on.

Telehealth physio is a great option, and even more so at the present time – check it out here at virtual.physio.