Telehealth Physiotherapy Services

What is Telehealth? - Telehealth describes the use of digital technology, including telephone and videoconferencing to enable clinical care between a health professional and the patient/client. Telehealth has been recommended by the Australian Physiotherapy Association as a suitable medium to enable vital continuity of care for all patients/clients requiring physiotherapy assessment, treatment and/or support during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Security and Privacy - All protection and limitations recommended by the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) and the Australian Privacy Act (1988) are the same for telehealth services as they are in person. Physiophi follows the guidelines of Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency for the management of health information which means your personal health information is kept private and secure, as required by federal and state privacy laws. If you have concerns, please discuss with your Physiotherapist.

Telehealth Platform for consultation or exercise Classes - Your clinician from Physiophi will be using the secure, privacy compliant server www.zoom.us to attend your physiotherapy video consultation or Pilates/exercise class.

You will be able to schedule your appointments as per usual procedure (either online for telehealth or contacting via phone/email for telehealth and exercise classes). Just prior to your appointment time you can use your computer or smart phone device to click on the link that will be emailed to you.

You will then be placed into an online waiting room and your clinician will join the online session. Please ensure that you:

Have a good broadband internet connection or a smart phone device with good cellular connection at home or at an appropriate location for services
Do not use public WIFI connections as your security and privacy cannot be guaranteed
Enter the waiting room a few minutes prior to your scheduled session to allow for time to enable your camera and microphone
Can be clearly seen with enough space to demonstrate some movements that may be required during your objective assessment.

Session Structure - Sessions will be conducted in the same way as face-to-face sessions are. In order to have effective telehealth therapy sessions, the following guidelines are recommended:

Make sure that you are in a private location where your sessions cannot be overheard by others. Ensure that you adjust the volume on your device to protect your privacy, or consider wearing headphones. You are required to inform your clinician if there is anyone in the room with you, or who you believe may overhear the session
Try to have proper lighting so that your clinician can best communicate with you
Try to minimise background noise and distractions

If the connection is broken for any reason, your clinician will call you to remedy the situation. If transmission should fail, your clinician will resume the session via phone until internet-based therapy has returned.

Client Rights - Clients have the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting their right to future care or treatment.

The laws that protect the confidentiality of my medical information also apply to telehealth. As such, the information disclosed by the client during the course of the session is confidential within the limits of confidentiality as outlined in the client agreement.

Clients understand that there are risks and consequences from telehealth. These may include, but are not limited to, the possibility, despite reasonable efforts on the part of my physiotherapist, that: the transmission of services could be disrupted or distorted by technical failures; misunderstandings may occur, and/or possible confidentiality breaches if someone should walk into the client’s room while in session.

Clients agree that the service terms and conditions, including attendance policies and fees are the same for telehealth services as an in-patient consultation whereby a non-attendance fee (equivalent to the consultation fee) will be charged if an appointment is changed or cancelled without 24 hours’ notice or if the appointment is not attended.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TELEHEALTH CONSULT NOW OR CALL (07) 3172 4332 TO BOOK YOUR EXERCISE/PILATES CLASS.