With many employees sitting for hours at a time, hunched over a computer, it should be no surprise
Yet, physical therapy can prove expensive, if not inaccessible, during the pandemic. Hila Glick, vice president of physical therapy and patient experience at OneStep says that her company’s app could change that.
“Most of us need some type of physical therapy, and that could mean treatment for a month or it could be for life,” says Glick. “So people should have the ability to access PT from their homes at the time they want and in the spaces they feel comfortable in — not everyone can pay for private physical therapists and commute to clinics.”
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Essentially, OneStep is trying to put the physical therapy experience into an app, so people can either access its services independently or as an employer-sponsored virtual healthcare benefit. The platform offers 24/7 coaching, recovery plans, progress reports as well as access to OneStep’s motion lab, which can assess a patient’s walk from their smartphone.
“We take the results from the walk analysis and create the parameters for the recovery process,” Glick says. “A physical therapist can then communicate with patients via video and offer instructions and tweaks on exercises.”
OneStep also provides real-time clinical insights to its users, allowing them to see their progress in numbers, which is helpful to those who are uncertain if their PT work is paying off, explains Glick.
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“Many patients do not feel the changes happening to them at first, but then they see the line on graphs move,” she says. “Only then do they start to feel like they’re doing better, which also makes them feel better.”
Still, while the app can technically replace in-person physical therapy in some cases, Glick believes it can best serve as a companion to in-person therapy, since recovery often comes down to the work the patient does at home after seeing their therapist.
“There are critical things that need to be done when the physical therapist is not near you and helping you move your body,” says Glick. “We give people homework because helping you build a regular exercise routine is the most important part. You cannot put that aside and hope to feel better.”
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Glick says that even the best patients may do their assigned exercises once a week at home — which is not enough to make a steady recovery. The app could enforce at-home exercises by bringing virtual therapist support into the picture, rather than coaching being limited to a weekly session, she says.
Notably, people do not have to wait for their body pain to reach the extent that medical attention is necessary. Being that physical therapy can lower healthcare costs by 72%, according to the scientific journal Health Services Research, seeking treatment is another form of preventative care. For example, if a patient waits for their back pain to send them to the hospital for an MRI, it could cost them thousands of more dollars.
And given that 50 million adults suffer from chronic pain in the U.S., physical therapy may be crucial to maintaining a level of physical independence and a longer life, as well as lower healthcare bills — all of which is relevant to the success employees and their employers.
“PT is something everyone can really benefit from, whether it's the employers or the workers,” says Glick. “We know that employees who are in pain or suffering are not good for the employer, and healthy employees should feel physically good and comfortable at work.”
