2 min readingBetween providing patient care and intensive documenting needs, physical therapists often struggle to manage their capacity. WebPT’s 2023 State of Rehab Therapy found that 90.8% of therapists document outside of working hours to some extent and that 38.5% of physical therapists struggle with burnout.
Of course, these capacity challenges also present financial challenges for physical therapy practices because they limit the number of patients that they can serve and the number of appointments they can provide.
However, computer vision can help increase in-clinic physical therapist capacity by providing the following capabilities:
- Real-time feedback and corrective guidance allows physical therapists and techs to provide lower-touch PT services when appropriate without compromising on quality
- Capacity to simultaneously provide guidance to more patients than a single physical therapist
- Free up physical therapists to provide more one-on-one physical therapy services while allowing other patients to continue exercising with real-time guidance
One potential use of computer vision rehab technology in clinics is group therapy. CMS defines group therapy as “simultaneous treatment to two or more patients who may or may not be doing the same activities.” Unlike one-on-one therapy, group therapy involves “brief, intermittent personal contact.” Thus, if more patients are able to effectively exercise in the clinic at the same time, the clinic can increase its billing potential. According to the CMS Physician Fee Schedule, Medicare reimburses $18 for its untimed group therapeutic procedures CPT code, 97150. Assuming a PT practice has 100,000 Medicare appointments per year, here’s how increasing group therapy with computer vision could increase annual revenue:
By increasing instances of group therapy with computer vision, providers can both increase annual revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars and improve the quality of patients’ in-clinic exercising.
Of course, the opportunity does not stop with practices’ Medicare population. There are similar opportunities to drive additional revenue with computer vision-supported in-clinic exercising for Commercial populations as well.
For more information on increasing physical therapy revenue, check out our posts “Capturing the Unserved Physical Therapy Market with Digital and Hybrid PT Packages” and “How much revenue are you losing to patient no-shows?”
Or, feel free to reach out to us at info@kemtai.com.
