Hi all,
I know this may be a fairly controversial post for some, and welcome news for others. I’m not interested in the social discourse of what you believe is right or wrong, this is not the purpose of this post. I’m here to convey information only, as ethically I am comfortable with keeping our business open to those in need. We do 1-1 home-visits for physio and Exercise Physiology if you haven’t heard of our company.
Scomo, our governing body the APA, together with the NDIS has told us that if we need to continue face-to-face appointments we can, but encouraged Telehealth for non essential consults. We give patients this choice. Lots of our patients have chronic conditions, and for them to not have their regular physio appointments for significant conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, MS, stroke, etc could have significant consequences for them both in the short and long-term.
We are not forcing any of our physios to do face-to-face appointments, as we understand the risks involved. We respect and support any choice they make. For those on staff that do want to continue, we provide them with the tools they need:
– Hospital grade infection wipes, masks, gloves, thermal infrared (contactless) thermometers.
– All pathogen-control measures the dept of health recommends (hand-washing etc)
– 5kg of hand sanitiser coming this week
– We also practice social distancing in homes, standing 1.5m from them or even outside a window, to be their patient reflection.
Just yesterday I had one of our physios tell me this:
“I saw a patient yesterday with fairly significant physical and mental health issues who said thanks for seeing her, because no-one else will, and what is she supposed to do?”
I will do whatever I can to help, given I’m a single mum trying to juggle spending time with my kids while knowing I need to work..home life is chaos!! But my kids are happy and adapting fairly well, so I am grateful for that and the support I’ve had so far.”
I am also happy to say that as of tomorrow we will be placing 10% of the total of each and every visit we receive from consults to go towards helping those on the front-line, nurses, kitchen-staff, pathologists eg, anyone who will be directly effected by the shit-show that is upon us. This will come from our company bottom-line, not the brave physios and exercise physiologists who will keep working.
What I don’t know is, how or where to give this? Please recommend if you know…
We are happy to chat for free at any point if you have simple questions. We will providing you with a medical waiver to sign to do so, as we may not know your other docs, physios, reiki-masters etc, and we do need some protection.
We also offer Telehealth for more in-depth needs. “What is Telehealth?”, asked nobody in the last week.
For those of you that have been too busy watching re-runs of Seinfeld, or eating more calories than you need (??♂️), Telehealth allows is us to see you on a screen a home. It can be a face-time call, or a Skype-call, or in our case it’s a program that allows us to do exercises with you in real time, whilst giving you feedback along the way #howcoolisthat?
With every allied health practitioner and their dog, offering telehealth at the moment, what’s our point of difference you may be asking? Probably not much..but our exceptional software #physitrack allows you to view exercises in real-time (with someone much better looking than myself…that’s our point of difference).
The good thing is, as of tomorrow, Medicare can reimburse you for the visit, much like you may have done in the past with an EPC visit. Some Private health insurers are coming on board April 14th.
So if you need physio, and have the benefits, why not use them? There is a plethora of evidence showing telehealth is as useful as in person physio, for a variety of conditions. Not all, but some.
To get a referral for Telehealth for Medicare purposes, you need a GP visit which can now also occur via Telehealth. You can use GP2YOU to have a consult with your GP or call your local GP to see if they can do a Telehealth consult. Ask specifically for a Telehealth plan to see your physio.
Private health insurance visits do not require you to get a Medicare referral.
We also are still doing home visits, for those patients that require.
We are open, we want to help..we are Hub And Spoke Health.
www.hubandspoke.health
ben@hubandspoke.health
+61413 677 222
