How to Introduce the PT-Helper Tools to Your Team of Physical Therapists
Published on March 20, 2018
Creating a personalized Home Exercise Program (HEP) for your patient on PT-Helper CONNECT can be completed in 3 easy steps. Synchronizing their HEP with the PT-Helper mobile app on their phone will help patients overcome common hurdles that stop them from doing their home exercises.
A PT Home Exercise Program for Golfer's Elbow Injury from the Summit Medical Group
Published on March 13, 2018
We’ve curated nine (9) exercises shared by the Summit Medical Group into a Home Exercise Program on PT-Helper CONNECT. The HEP program can be synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app with HEP code 4D629988.
Reminder: Please consult your physician before engaging in any physical activity and stop if you experience pain or discomfort.
How To Add Your Own Exercises to PT-Helper
Published on March 6, 2018
Create your own new exercises on our web-based exercise prescription service, CONNECT. These exercises are private to your group and not shared with other CONNECT users. New exercises can also be created on our PT-Helper mobile app. You can also add videos and pictures to prescribed or favorite exercises on the mobile app.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
How to Introduce the PT-Helper Tools to Your Team of Physical Therapists
The benefits of the PT-Helper mobile app to help your patients complete their home exercises (improving compliance and resulting in better outcomes) will help motivate your staff to try out PT-Helper’s web-based exercise prescription solution, CONNECT.
A short example of the mobile app in use is shown below.
Benefits of PT-Helper mobile app for the patient are:
- No more exercise papers to deal with
- Always have their prescribed exercises with them
- Up to 3 daily reminders to do their exercises
- Counts hold times, repetitions and sets
- Walks them through their complete home exercise program (HEP)
- With a free 30-day trial, there is no financial risk to trying out PT-Helper CONNECT.
The simple-to-use interface of CONNECT makes it easy to learn how to add patients and add exercises to their personalized treatment plan. Using their preferred browser, your staff can login and quickly start adding patients and exercises.
Simply selecting 
, entering the patient’s first and last name will create the patient’s profile.
, entering the patient’s first and last name will create the patient’s profile.
Then select 
to enter the treating therapist, location and injury.
to enter the treating therapist, location and injury.Once these fields have been completed, select
to view our exercise database and to select exercises to add to the home exercise plan.
CONNECT allows the therapist to change the parameters of each exercise such as hold times, repetitions and sets. It also allows the therapist to add unique comments to each exercise selected to customize the instructions for each patient.
CONNECT also allows therapists to modify existing exercises or add their own exercises to the database with unique pictures and instructions. These exercises are private to the therapist’s group and not shared with other therapists. No more need to hand-draw pictures or repeated re-write instructions.
In addition, protocols can be created simplifying the process of finding and adding exercises to treatment plans.
An added benefit to the therapist is an exercise history log for each patient, which records when the patient completes an exercise on the mobile app.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
A PT Home Exercise Program for Golfer's Elbow Injury from the Summit Medical Group
Despite the cold temperatures and nor’easter storms lashing the eastern seaboard, spring and warmer weather will be here soon providing us the opportunity to enjoy outdoor activities. Unfortunately, a dormant winter season followed by
robust activity often leads to injuries. A common warm weather injury is
Golfer’s Elbow.
A suggested physical therapy treatment plan is shared by
Summit Medical Group.
We have curated nine exercises from their
Medial Epicondylitis Rehabilitation Exercises
sheet into a Home Exercise Program (HEP) using the PT-Helper CONNECT platform and presented on the PT-Helper mobile app.
These sample exercises can be quickly downloaded into the PT-Helper mobile app using
HEP code: 4D629988
You can also find these exercises in the Wrist and Elbow category in the PT-Helper mobile app to add to your Favorites which allows you to customize each exercise’s repetitions, sets, and hold time.
Reminder: Please consult your physician before engaging in any physical activity and stop if you experience pain or discomfort.
EXERCISES INCLUDED:
- Wrist Flexion/Extension:
- Wrist Extension Stretch:
- Wrist Flexion Stretch:
- Forearm Pronation/Supination:
- Eccentric Wrist Flexion:
- Eccentric Wrist Extension:
- Ball Grip Strengthening:
- Forearm Pronation/Supination Resisted:
- Bicep Curl:
Bend your wrist forward as far as you can and hold. Bend your wrist backward as far as you can and hold. Repeat.
Keeping elbow straight, palm faces down and use other hand to grasp the back of hand. Slowly allow wrist to bend, pull back of hand down until stretch is felt in forearm. Hold. Relax to starting position.
Keeping elbow straight, grasp palm side of hand and slowly bend your wrist backward until a stretch is felt on underside of forearm. Hold. Relax to starting position.
Extend your hand palm up and slowly rotate your hand onto a palm down position until a stretch is felt. Hold. Slowly rotate your hand onto a palm up position until a stretch is felt. Hold, then repeat.
Hold a weight in the hand of your injured side with your palm up. Use your other hand to bend your wrist up. Release your injured hand and use just your injured hand to lower the weight slowly back to the starting position. Repeat.
Hold a weight in the hand of your injured side with your palm facing down. Use your other hand to bend your wrist up. Release your injured hand and use just your injured hand to lower the weight slowly back to the starting position. Repeat.
Hold a soft rubber ball in your affected hand. Squeeze the ball and hold. Briefly relax your hand. Repeat.
With your forearm supported on a table and your palm down, grasp an object and gently rotate your palm up as far as possible. Then gently rotate to palm down as far as possible.
Stand in good posture with arm straight, palm forward, holding a weight or pulling on a exercise band secured to the floor. Bend elbow curling hand up towards shoulder. Pause then slowly lower to starting position. Keep elbow fixed at your side during the exercise. Your therapist may have you alternate arms.
GOLFER’S EXERCISE DEMO, AS VIEWED ON THE PT-HELPER MOBILE APP
Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT
tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe Home Exercise Programs like the one shown above.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
How To Add Your Own Exercises to PT-Helper
At the American Physical Therapy Conference (APTA) Combined Sections Meeting (CSM) in New Orleans in Feb 2018, we received very positive responses to the PT-Helper mobile app for patients as well as our online exercise prescription service, CONNECT, for therapists.
One of the common questions we received was, “Can therapists create their own exercises?”
The answer is YES!
Creating Exercises on CONNECT
Therapists can create their own unique exercises on CONNECT that they can prescribe to their patients. These exercises will be private to the therapist’s account and will not be shared with other CONNECT subscribers.
To create and manage your private exercises in CONNECT, select (1) Settings on the pull-down menu at the top right of the screen, select (2) My Exercises, and then select (3) Add Exercise.
This will bring up the Add Exercise form to enter the exercise name, description, default exercise parameters, and exercise images.
Many of the PT-Helper exercises use three pictures to define an exercise: Start/Rest position, Concentric motion (or Hold position for stretches), Eccentric motion (or Recovery position for stretches). Quite frequently, the Start/Rest position will be the same as the Recovery position. We also have the ability to add Support images for more detailed motions or to improve understanding of the exercise sequence.
An example of an exercise created by a therapist on CONNECT is the Golf Reach Thru exercise by BreakOut Advisors and Rehabilitation with the images shown below. A little digital processing by PT-Helper was done to remove the background and to add some arrows resulting in a very clean sequence of pictures that their patients/clients can easily follow.
Creating Exercise on the Mobile App
In addition to creating exercises on CONNECT, it is possible to create exercises locally on the patient’s smartphone using the PT-Helper mobile app. This may be useful for individualized exercises that will not be prescribed to different patients or in the home health space where the therapist needs to create an exercise based upon the restrictions found in the home.
To create an exercise on the mobile app, select Exercises By Category from the app’s home page and then select Create An Exercise. This will bring up a form where you can specify the name, category, description, and exercise parameters.
Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe HEPs that can easily be synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app.
One of the common questions we received was, “Can therapists create their own exercises?”
The answer is YES!
Creating Exercises on CONNECT
Therapists can create their own unique exercises on CONNECT that they can prescribe to their patients. These exercises will be private to the therapist’s account and will not be shared with other CONNECT subscribers.
To create and manage your private exercises in CONNECT, select (1) Settings on the pull-down menu at the top right of the screen, select (2) My Exercises, and then select (3) Add Exercise.
This will bring up the Add Exercise form to enter the exercise name, description, default exercise parameters, and exercise images.
Many of the PT-Helper exercises use three pictures to define an exercise: Start/Rest position, Concentric motion (or Hold position for stretches), Eccentric motion (or Recovery position for stretches). Quite frequently, the Start/Rest position will be the same as the Recovery position. We also have the ability to add Support images for more detailed motions or to improve understanding of the exercise sequence.
An example of an exercise created by a therapist on CONNECT is the Golf Reach Thru exercise by BreakOut Advisors and Rehabilitation with the images shown below. A little digital processing by PT-Helper was done to remove the background and to add some arrows resulting in a very clean sequence of pictures that their patients/clients can easily follow.
Creating Exercise on the Mobile App
In addition to creating exercises on CONNECT, it is possible to create exercises locally on the patient’s smartphone using the PT-Helper mobile app. This may be useful for individualized exercises that will not be prescribed to different patients or in the home health space where the therapist needs to create an exercise based upon the restrictions found in the home.
To create an exercise on the mobile app, select Exercises By Category from the app’s home page and then select Create An Exercise. This will bring up a form where you can specify the name, category, description, and exercise parameters.
Adding Video or Photos to the Mobile App
Once any exercise is added to Favorites or is part of a prescribed Home Exercise Program (HEP), you can use the camera symbol
located at the top left of the screen to take pictures or videos. You can take videos of your patient doing their exercises while giving verbal cues on how to do it properly. Since these pictures or videos are not exported by PT-Helper, they will remain private on the patient’s phone.
Watch the short how-to video below to learn how to add pictures or video to the PT-Helper mobile app.
Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe HEPs that can easily be synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app.
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