What Are You Building?

A recent timeline photo appeared on my phone that brought me back to a year ago in my garage. What I was building then was a way to accelerate and enhance patient engagement into the home by expanding the reach of care outside the clinic walls. The pandemic had accelerated this move for many rehab professionals, like myself, at the same pace as it did for just about all of healthcare. 

In response to our state’s first shelter in place order and shutdown, in March 2020 I moved all my patients to remote telehealth sessions and by the time this photo was taken (April 2020) I had a full working telehealth studio which took over my family home gym area. The only sticking point at this point was on the payment side as federal, state and local governing bodies were still slugging it out to decide if rehab could bill for telehealth. Unsigned patient visits were indeed piling up but patient care continued uninterupted.

The photo you see here shows the next acceleration of what I was building on the innovation side of things. I was working on improving tele-evaluation and diagnosis to improve the patient virtual experience and remote monitoring potential of wearable devices. I did this by inviting dialogue with partners and holding collaborative Zoom sessions to learn more about who was doing the best work in this area of rehab technology. The flowers, herbs, vegetables and cement seen surrounding me in the photo were just other things I was getting ready to build outside of work hours to stay positive and restore my brain each day. The laptop and of course the coffee and a fast wifi internet connection which was enhanced by outside streaming from an open garage door were, and remain, essential office tools today. 

I referred to this expanded garage getaway area in the photo as my own “GarageBand”. It was the only quiet place I could find left dormant in my home where I wasn’t fighting for bandwidth and could occasional stand up from a very poor ergonomic couch sitting posture (couch stolen from the basement), turn the music up a bit and relax without being group family texted to be quiet! 

I should add I was also competing inside the home with two young adults in virtual college, one in high school and with my spouse, a school RN, trying to teach virtual health classes to K-5th graders while calling parents and staff at all hours of the day, night and early morning to COVID contact trace (all these school nurses are super heroes by the way!).

So this photo memory I’ve shared captured a critical point of the pandemic I will always remember. Fact is, nobody was prepared for this, especially not physical therapists who for the most part (98% sampled) were not even thinking about digital anything prior to the pandemic.

Despite all the family hardships, civil unrest and ongoing climing death toll we all continue to demonstrate resilience and are still all rebuilding in this new normal. 

The photo also reminded me it resonated with me so much that I used it later in the year in August as part of my presentation at the IMPACCT mobile in clinical trials conference. I’m making the replay available again on instant replay if you’d like to watch it to learn how physical therapy weathered the storm.

• Did we build resilience during COVID-19?
• What were the lessone we learned??
• What's Next??? 

In addition to learning why my hair is so long (aka MacGiver style), you can learn about "my why" and my fuel and passion to improve the patient recovery journey. I’ll share how this was born out of my own experiences as a heart and stroke patient. You’ll also see from the program agenda I’ve included above you may be interested to understand why therapy has been slow to evolve to digital, now needs to innovate FAST in the years ahead and why some of the most vulnerable patients we treat are demanding digital first solutions now more than ever!

In my next article I'll share why building and innovating in PT during the pandemic has now moved me outside the clinic full time to discover new pathways and better opportunities for patients!

 What are you building that excites you? Please SHARE!